San Angelo City Council November 6, 2012

[0:00:00] [Music] Good Morning. Let's go ahead and call the meeting to order and and start off this morning by asking uh Reverend Tommy Richardson from the Emanuel Baptist Church to lead us in prayer. If you'd pray with me, please. Lord, we come to you today thanking you for a for a beautiful day outside. Lord, I I do thank you for uh these that are serving and in leadership. Lord, I thank you for those who put their life on the line for us with emergency personnel of this city and county. Lord, I pray that with each one that uh you would grant them the wisdom that your scripture speaks of with an axe that is dull and it's not sharpened requires much more exertion on our part. But Lord, the you also tell us that the benefit of wisdom is success. Lord, I pray for your wisdom during today. I pray it for in this room with the leaders that are here. Lord, I pray it for our country on election day. Lord, we look forward to seeing what you're going to do in our midst. We know that you're overseeing everything. Lord, we know that you're in control of everything. And Lord, we just lift our country up to you today as we choose leadership. Father, we thank you for that opportunity, that freedom that you give us. I thank you for the students that are here today, those that'll observe, those who are going to take part. Father, I just thank you for those who are interested in seeing and growing

[0:02:02] and maturing. Lord, I do pray that today would be a day that in everything that we do, whether you're on a city council, whether you occupy a position somewhere within our city, Lord, it'd be one where each and every thing that we do, we think, we say, would honor you. Lord, we give this day to you in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. I am joined today by Matthew Montag. He's a sixth grader at Texas Leadership Charter Academy and he'll help me with the pledges. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I aliance to the Texas. One state one and indivisible. Great job. [Applause] I have a a couple of proclamations this morning and the first one will be accepted today by uh Dr. Sharon Tomlins. You want to go ahead and join? She is the Nathan and Sylvia Donssky endowed chair for the professor of management and executive director for the center of international studies at Angelo State. The proclamation whereas international education week is a joint initiative of the United States Department of Education and the US Department of State. It celebrates the importance and

[0:04:05] benefits of international education in the United States and around the world. And whereas President Obama has stated all of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart or whether we commit ourselves to an effort, a sustained effort to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children and to respect the dignity of all human beings. And whereas we are reminded that the challenges we face today are increasingly borderless. Climate change, the environment, and the economy are but some of the issues that affect our daily lives and demand our attention on a global scale. and finding sustainable solutions is imperative and will require an unprecedented level of international cooperation. And whereas a complete education in the 21st century must teach our children about their interdependent world. And it must prepare them to be good leaders and good global citizens. And whereas international awareness and knowledge can help our children build the skills needed to communicate and cooperate with those from other nations and other cultures. And as they participate in international education and international exchange, our students can gain the knowledge and experiences to help them contribute to a sustainable future for all. Now therefore, I, Alvin New, mayor of the city of St. Angelo, Texas, on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim the week of November the 12th through the 16th, 2012 as International Education Week 2012, striving for a healthier future worldwide. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. It is our uh distinct pleasure and honor to accept this proclamation on behalf of Angela State University. Since uh November of 2000, the US Department of State and the US Department of Education have recognized the second week in November as international education week, which serves as a perfect opportunity to educate our students better about being globally competent and successful uh citizens of this world. ASU is in full

[0:06:08] support of this as you know or you may may not know but actually we send about 150 of our students abroad every year and this coming summer our students will be on every continent with the exception of Antarctica which I can find no students who want to go there right now and um South America. Uh I also want to let you know that ASU sponsors about 200 international education or international students representing 24 different countries this year of which the largest group by far are from South Korea. And today I've brought some of these students here and uh they're going to come up and you can uh see what they look like. So come on up. And uh we have here uh today representing the Korean students association their president uh which is Sang Wu Park. So they're going to come up. We have we have about 140 uh students from Korea at this time at ASU. So this is only a small part of them. So thank you very much. How many? Almost 200 international students. About 140 Korean students. That's what I thought. Short people in the front. Short people. Can you get us all? Scoot up here. Come on. Be friendly. Be friendly. All right. Good. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Are you look very Christmy, so maybe you get to help me. So, uh I have Uh, another proclamation

[0:08:13] concerning the Koncho Christmas Celebration Day, December the 8th, 2012. Uh, to be accepted today by uh, uh, Marilyn Flag. Is Tracy and Tracy Flagy, thanks for your help. I should have come and asked. Uh, Marilyn Fagy. And is Tracy Jordan here with you or no? No, she's in class. Okay. So, come help me. Uh, as representatives from the Koncho Christmas celebration. How are you? Hi. Good. The proclamation whereas the 18th annual city of St. Angelo Concho Christmas celebration with over 3 million lights is one of the largest Christmas lighting displays in the state. And whereas the display offers a two and one half mile mark walking or driving tour beginning behind the main post office on the corner of Abe Street and First Street and ending at El Paso de Santael in and whereas those involved consist of hundreds of volunteers including offenders from the Department of Corrections who assist with installation of Christmas scenes and hang lights. The St. Angelo Restaurant Association who supply food to the inmates. RSVP who deliver inmates food, members of the St. Angelo Artist Society who prepare the giant Christmas cards, and whereas the community Christmas tree lighting ceremony will be held Saturday, December the 8th of 2012 at 5:30 p.m. at the corner of South Chadurn and West Koncho Avenue. Activities will include the St. Angelo Community Band conducted by Dr. Daniel Mloud of Angelo State University, the Harmony Bells Chorus directed by Libby Kamik, and the Twin Mountain Tonesmen directed by Mark Clark. And whereas the community tree lighting will be followed by the 11th annual Lights of Christmas parade at 6 p.m. which may be viewed on Second Street between Oaks and Chadburn, on Chadurn between Second Street and Concho, on Concho between Chadburn and Oaks, and on Oaks back to Second Street. And whereas the tour of lights can be

[0:10:15] seen Sunday through Thursday from 6 pm to 10 p.m. and each Friday and Saturday from 6 pm to midnight December the 7th through December the 31st 2012. Now therefore I Alvin new mayor of the city of St. Angelo, Texas on behalf of the city council do hereby declare Saturday December the 8th of 2012 as Koncho Christmas celebration day. Thank you. We always do concho Christmas the first full weekend in December. So that means this year the lights will only be on 24 nights. So don't wait. Get out there as soon as you can. And this year we're going to have a wonderful new $44,000 scene of an American flag all done in lights with fireworks going off, animated fireworks on it. So it's really going to be spectacular. So I encourage you to come. And to help get all of you in the Christmas spirit, I have brought candy canes for everybody. So you can get the chocolate of Halloween out of your mouth and get the peppermint of Christmas in. Thank you. [Applause] No, that's not help. [Music] Hey, Marilyn. Good to see you. How are you? Good morning. Thank you. You all like the Girl Scout cookies so much. Thank you. At this time, the council likes to invite public comment. The council takes

[0:12:17] public comment on all items in the regular agenda. Public input on a regular agenda item will be taken at its appropriate discussion. Public input on an item not on the agenda or on the consent agenda may be identified and requested for consideration by the council at this time. The council may request an item be placed on a future agenda or for a consent agenda item to be moved to the regular agenda for public comment. So, uh, council any Yes, sir. Three. I'd like poll number three. Mr. Silvis, are you saying something? Uh, I just had a comment I wanted to make. Okay, I'll get you then. Okay. Any others? items as far five, six, and seven. Okay. Three, five, six, and seven. Okay. Items from the consent agenda to be moved to the regular agenda for comment are three, five, six, and seven. Okay. Uh, just approve. Motion to approve excluding items 3, five, six, and seven. Second. Okay. So, we have a motion and a second concerning the consent agenda. And uh let me pull that vote forward so that I get it done and then I'll recognize Mr. Silvis and then the public. Um let me call for that vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Mr. Silus. Now, I just wanted to share a concern I had from one of my downtown constituents about the uh handicap parking and what the law is, state law versus our law. And there seems to be some some abuse uh going on with that that type of parking. And I wanted uh just somebody to look into it so I can get back with them to see just a clarification on on what their their right is. Uh a lot of their business is uh or their business is being hampered by some of these folks that are taking advantage. And I've heard two different stories. Just trying to get a clarification on what it is. and uh wanted to make sure that I asked I mean I told the gentleman I would I would bring it up so I'm just sharing that with you guys. Okay sir. Other public comment. Yes ma'am. Yes sir. I wanted to

[0:14:20] take the opportunity to u thank the Lake View band and the Twin Mountain Tonesmen for the grand opening of the city hall. I thought they did an excellent job and all of the folks that entertained during the grand opening event. It was it was just an excellent event and uh very proud of the folks that participated and put the put it together. Super. Is there public input uh this morning? Good morning. Craig Myers with WTO. I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you all to dinner. Um, and I promise you that if you come, we'll seat you far enough from each other, and if you don't talk to one another, it will not violate the u uh public meetings act. But on Wednesday evening at 6:30, there's going to be the second annual Thursday. That Thank you. Um, Thursday evening at 6:30. So, now I didn't know you were a puppet. Yeah. But, um, uh, there'll be, um, dinner at 6:30 at St. Paul Presbyterian Church and then we have uh uh a general meeting. What happens is that um WTOS puts in a thousand hours every couple of months in volunteer stuff, but everybody works in their own projects and very seldom we get to come together all together from all the different churches and projects and just celebrate what has happened and also show appreciation as we did last year to all the city staff which just you know work constantly in the neighborhoods with us uh to do so many things. And this time also we have invited our new u city manager to come and share his wisdom with us and we'll leave a lot smarter and you know you you can do get smarter too. Uh but uh it's a great time. Last year we had an overflow crowd and we look for the same thing to happen because we're celebrating some

[0:16:22] really good stuff and you guys have been a part of it and we would like to have you there so we could show our appreciation for you. Thank you. Remind us again when? Um Paul's Presbyterian Church. Thursday. This Thursday of this month at 6:30 at St. Paul Presbyterian Church. Put you on the spot. Yeah. Well, hey, when you get 72, it just, you know, it starts going downhill. Thank you. Okay. Other public comment this morning. Okay. Outstanding. Let me move us forward then to item agenda item number three on the consent agenda. Um and that was Mr. Morrison. Consideration of adopting a resolution ratifying its approval of increased service rates for ambulance services effective October the 16th, 2012. Mr. Morrison, this is primarily for the citizens to see what's going on. These ambulance prices are better than doubling. We are doubling the charges. So, I'd just like force Brian, if you would, please, sir, to put these figures up and tell the people what the new charges are going to be. I think they're extremely excessive. We are charging far more than it cost, and the only reasons we have been given is a because everybody else is charging it, the other cities, and B, we need to pay for our fire tower. So, I want you to explain what the charges are now and what they're going to be and tell the people why we're doubling what we're charging, please. Uh, all right. Right now, on a BLS emergency run or BLS non-emergency run, it's $220. It'll go to 600. A BLS emergency run, we do not have that category. That's one of the two new categories I told you last council meeting uh that's been instituted. It's $770. An ALS non-emergency run is the other new category. It'll be $800. An ALS1 emergency category right now is 385. It will go to $830. An ALS2 emergency is

[0:18:28] $575 and it will go to $955. The mileage went from $850 per carried mile to $10 per carried mile. And then our standby services is where we go out and do the football games or drag races, rodeo, wherever people request for those services went from uh for 4 hours was $300. It'll be $340 now for that uh 4 hour service. The uh fees, like I stated last time, uh we called 20 30 different departments. We looked at uh what their fees were uh and I pres presented the uh average of what those fees were. We have not raised fees since 2008. We our policy before was to look and see what Medicare did. Well, obviously the federal government hasn't adjusted Medicare or any of those rates in since 2008. Uh I don't know if that's because of Obamacare or Congress hadn't passed a budget or what, but I would guess that u in the future they're probably not going to be going up any while our cost uh consider continue to rise partly because uh a lot of the things we do is tied to the price of oil, the fuel for our vehicles, the plastic and everything that those medical components are made of is plastic. So which is produced by oil. So, and shipping those products to us. So, we have a lot of costs there. Like I told you before, some of the medical costs just one thing. An RO uh IO needle, an inustrious needle cost us $100. That's our cost to to put one of those in. CPR pads to do the actual electro uh cardio version cost us $114 for those pads. So, those costs are going up. Now, now part of the reason we looked at this was because we do need a new place to train. This is one revenue source I have. We do EMS training out there. That's part of it. Um

[0:20:33] um things that are not being covered by the price of the ambulances are ambulances. That's coming out of general fund. Of course, that's uh tax straight tax dollars. They're not being covered by the charges we charge for ambulances. So, they could be uh included in there. So, we're not covering all our costs by uh our charges that we charge for our ambulance runs. council. I might also remind as Brian did this study, he looked at when he reviewed rates, what we did was try to select uh cities and counties who operate systems. So, we excluded although he looked at those, we excluded the private ones which happen to be usually much more expensive. So, we really tried to compare only with other cities and counties who operated ambulance services in this area. Okay. I had a question. And I was going to ask for this item to be pulled also. My question I I have a and and I don't know if this is your question or someone else on staff, but the effective date is the 16th. I thought it was it started the the following week. Whatever the motion said we ratified it within the resolution. We put ratification and then that includes the date to October 16th. Okay. So I'm confused on the dates. What date was what date was it before? He presented the item on the October 16th. So he wanted to ratify the effective date to October 16th. So that is the date October 16th action now but it is effective on the date that he y'all passed the rates last time. The reason we didn't have this because I presented you with two options so I couldn't bring a resolution to you like this. You passed the rates last council meeting on October 16th. We're we're just um ratifying your former authorization effective the 16th of October. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Is there public input on this item? Okay. Let's have a motion moving this. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate

[0:22:35] that. And this was purely symbolic. I don't think we ought to double fees on anything. I think fees ought to to represent the cost. I voted against it last time. I vote against it this time, but I wanted you to give an opportunity to explain to the citizens why we are doubling their ambulance charges. Thank you. Well, and we won't wait on the federal government anymore. I can tell you that we'll we'll watch them every year and and make the adjustments accordingly. Let me let me add this comment also. I too had uh trouble swallowing this one. uh most of the taxes that we collect is supposed to be for fire and safety, fire, police, what all you know that's out there. So, I mean, most of the taxes supposed to be paying for some of this stuff anyway, whether you call it straight tax or or whatever. I can see where we're I don't want to say we're double dipping, but I think we're just putting a burden on and and some people say, well, those are the the the user the enduser that are being taxed, but still some of those end users are some of the elderly. And that's where I have a problem, big problem with the lady that came from the nursing home. I mean, these folks are barely getting so much money a month. And that's that's the only problem I have with it. And like I told told her, and I guess uh she didn't hear what I said. If you have Medicare, the rest of it above what Medicare pays is wiped off. They are not charged that. So I I don't know where she missed that. So, how much how much of the $500, $600 rate would Medicare pay? Depending on which type of run it is, Medicare pays Well, let's say it's the BLS rate. Just the on the BLS rate, uh, they're paying about $220 something dollars, I think, right now. Medicare would pay $200. Yes. And then they would pay the rest. No, it's that's written off. You cannot charge these people if they if we accept Medicare. That's what I was telling her. there those if they have Medicare and they submit that to the billing company, they get that part and the rest of that bill is wiped off.

[0:24:38] So then we we eat the difference. That's the non-collection part of the the billing rate. Yeah, we use a collection agency who does that for us. So the city doesn't actually have in-house staff that collect. I I I think the real the crux of this situation is do you bill to the lowest common denominator or do you I mean excuse do you set the rates to the lowest common denominator or do you set the rates at a market value and then at times you're going to have to accept the lowest common denominator that being Medicare and so and when you accept the lowest common denominator you write off the rest which is kind of the way insurance and that's what we've been doing in the past. We're moving to the market rate basically now. And you have also been waiting to see if some of those rates would change. They haven't changed. I mean since they have not changed since 2008 since 2008. So uh we would be better to make these changes a little at a time over time, but it's been four or five years now. So we're making a pretty good pretty good increase. uh but we haven't seen increases in in those types of reimbursement rates and things of that nature. So, but answering your question, there's no the person is not having to pay the difference. They're they're only being charged what Medicare picks up. Okay. I have a question. Okay. But the fee that we pay the collector, is that based on a percentage of what is build or based on the percentage of what is collected? It's based on what's collected. Thank you. Okay. Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve this item. Let me call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? N. Two nays. Okay. Uh we move on to item numbers uh item number five. This is consideration of adopting a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a US Department of

[0:26:41] Transportation Federal Aviation Administration space lease for real property. Uh, Miss Farmer, just a question to clarify in my mind. Is this a renewal of an existing uh, entity that's out there? Have they moved buildings and we're leasing additional or just one building, trading out buildings? That's that's all I need to know. This is from Good morning, Mayor Council. Uh, my name is Teresa Kov. I'm a planning specialist with emergency management. This is basically just a renewal of the old lease um with some small changes of the equipment of the city acquiring the generator as an asset. It's a new lease, but it's the same entity. That's okay. Yes, ma'am. Same. That's all I needed. Motion to approve. Okay. Any further public input on this item? Call for this vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Item number six. This is consideration of adopting a resolution authorizing the city manager to accept the fiscal year 2012 emergency management performance grant uh program grant award and Miss Farmer. Okay. This is a question for Michael Dayne and items six and seven can be done together. My question is their grants the follow-up procedure to apply to the grants requirement for reporting and payment method. Has that been set up for all grants? Who's responsible? What department in the city? I've asked before and you're going to get back to me. U has that been done? Well, right now the the procedure is unchanged that we have not centralized that uh the followup the compliance requirements all rest within the department who applies for and administers the grant. And that's what I don't like. So, we can talk about that at other times, but that that's you answered my question. That's all I need to know. Well, I I'm not sure that that really answers the question because, you know,

[0:28:44] yes, the department is responsible, but then does that mean that in each department that that applies for the grant that the the department head above that or does it where does it flow to? I mean it I I tend to agree that because grants are a little bit different, a little more unusual, unless I'm getting something wrong that shouldn't it flow at least to one spot. Let me if I may um and being on the audit committee is why I'm asking this question and uh I view as well as the audit committee does that you know possibly these procedures need to be changed in waiting for our new city manager to get on board. This report will be gi given I believe at next meeting but I'm simply making an issue of there's there's two more instances of grants that the flow of the reporting how it's handled how the funds are spent so we don't receive any penalties uh I'm not satisfied with and you you're just telling me it's still remaining the same until we get further direction from council that was your answer I took it to be well yes ma'am and we are having some turnover in accounting and we've been unable to add staff there And that's something we'll work out with the new city manager. But uh uh so that council has some perspective on it. Uh in the past grants when grants are applied for, they are applied for uh executed, administered, and the follow-up reporting and compliance requirements fulfilled by the individual departments who handled those grants. One of the things we've been talking about is centralizing some of those functions so that we have a more consistent product for compliance and follow-up uh and possibly more efficient. At one point we had an opportunity where funding was going to be limited in one of our federal programs and we had a terrific grants manager who whose position might have been going away but they've had turnover since then and they've restructured so they need to keep that person. So, our

[0:30:46] opportunity somewhat went away. Uh, the need is still there to uh uh address um on an organizationwide basis how we handle those. But until we uh get time to work on that and uh uh have another opportunity present itself, um it's not on the front burner at this time. it it's very much the audit committee was very much interested in improving um the way the city handles that and were very supportive when we had that opportunity. But um I I believe the fines assessed the fines assessed for not properly turning in reports or expediting the funds in the time frame or um not spending it what you're supposed to spend it on. the fines can be quite heavy, sometimes almost as much as the grant itself. So, that's what I want to prevent and I was simply wanting to make sure that the rest of the council in in a granting okay for grants, we need a better follow-up procedure and that is being worked on and I hope to have something soon. Farmer will definitely follow up on that. Um, I do like the idea of centralized and that's how we had in my previous city also is uh just to make sure that compliance is met and make sure that we are following the proper procedure and I'll definitely work with Michael on that. We'll get that done. Motion to approve items six and seven on consent agenda. Charlotte, let me just add to that and I'm glad you brought that up because Michael, what I'm hearing is and please tell me we're not using this as an excuse is the turnover rate cannot be an excuse and it can't be exempt. It's not listed as an exemption from us getting fines, right? The turnover rate is is it's always been there. Correct. I mean, are we using this just as a crutch for us not moving forward or Well, we had an opportunity because we had an experienced person that we whose position was going to be going away and we were going to take advantage of that, centralize that and then spread the

[0:32:50] burden across all the grants. But when um when that department had some turnover, they had a way to keep that experienced mana grants manager. And so our opportunity to take advantage of that experience went away because those people needed to retain that person. And so we didn't have a small crisis on our hands to address uh because that that went away through other turnover. In addition to that, in the accounting department, they are having some turnover. Uh we lost an experienced long-term investment uh portfolio manager and so the accountants have moved up. Um we have a vacant accounting position. Um we've had an accounting technician position turn over. I just saw the requisition to repost that position come through. And so they're struggling at this time and uh it would be a terrific time to add somebody, but there is a training burden that goes with bringing in somebody new. And so we'll just have to work that timing. Uh but I'm very glad to hear you're supportive of improving those uh controls and uh getting a more consistent result. It's not that we've had problems in those areas. uh it's but it does yield a more consistent result if there is some centralization of some of those compliance uh activities. I I think the point I was trying to make is that that short of a some kind of long-term solution or whatever that you want to come up with. I believe there is some short term that I think would satisfy uh some of the thoughts and that is to have the finance department basically responsible for it while the each individual department still has to oversee, manage etc and do all the proper paperwork but having someone that can at least say hey did that get done did that get done did we file the stuff did that and just to you know not necessarily completing all the paperwork but just you know ensuring that it's done where we

[0:34:53] one central department that's kind of a partner. A partner but with responsibility. Correct. Okay. Well, you're still are you still not overseeing the finance department? I am. You're still over the everything. Yes, but we are still short a finance director. We're short one accountant. We're short one accounting technician who will leave near the middle of the month. And um so we are struggling very much and and I have to add that and I had a taxpayer ask me just a while back when you were named assistant city manager and I said I couldn't answer that. I don't remember that. So that's why I'm asking if you're still over finance and we don't know when you became assistant city manager. Well he did. Okay. Well and I won't go there. I know it's but I'm just throwing that in. Motion still stands and I had a second. Second. Okay, I'm going to call for the vote. Um, all those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Uh, let me move us to agenda item number 13. Aqua group. Aqua squad. Good morning. Good morning. Let's have a presentation this morning. And this is uh Dr. Christy Uker. She's the education director for the Upper Colorado River Authority. and she has a student group here this morning. So, uh, please introduce what you're up to. Okay. Uh, thanks for having us today. We have Aqua Squad here today and this is a group of of middle school students and and it is part of a bigger program that our community should

[0:36:55] really be proud of called the Center for Creative Energy. It's a partnership between the Upper Colorado River Authority, the St. Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, and St. Angelo ISD. And these students are they apply to to do service really around our our water issues and to help raise public awareness. Um they they have to apply they have to get teacher recommendations, go through interviews and they are immersed in in all of these things related to water in our local community and elsewhere as well as uh learning quite a bit about art and design um that they will show you a little bit about. They put together a photography exhibit showcasing some of their ideas and what they what struck them about what's going on in our community with water. Um I've been really proud of them. They are a really um effective way to get the message out to our community and raise public awareness on these issues. This is their future and they are really bright and have a lot to say about it. This past summer they traveled to San Diego as part of this program. And this is a part the federal we have a federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services that helps fund this this project as well. It's a three-year grant and they were able to go and learn about the San Diego River and the issues there and they they participated in some workshops on this and they wanted to share with you some of their ideas and recommendations. I also want to thank the city for their continued support and involvement in Aqua Squad. Um it wouldn't be as effective as it was if we didn't have the support of of everyone in the city. Um including u Brian helped us put together a great video that we're going to start out with before they show their their short presentation. Christie, yes. The Does the group change every year? Yes. Um we this we have one more year in this grant cycle, although we anticipate doing more. So we do we we have new new students apply every year. We're the Aqua Squad encouraging you to save water by Hello, it's Aqua Squadter Dakota Robas here to talk to you about

[0:38:58] Lisa Faucets. If you fix a Lisi faucet, it can save up to 40 gallons a week. Do your part. Be water smart. Hi, this is Uncle Sky member Diamond Go encouraging you to save water by turning off the water while you're brushing your teeth. Doing so saves 4 gallons of water per minute. Be do your part and be water smart. Hi, this is Aqua Squad member Joe Navaro encouraging you to conserve water by soaking pots and pans instead of letting the water run while you scrape them clean. Do your part. Be water smart. Hi, this is Aqua Squad member Kirsten Davis encouraging you to save water by only doing full loads of laundry and dishes. Doing so can save 600 gallons of water per month. Do your part. Be water smart. Hi, Squad member Julian Taylor encouraging you to take showers in less than 5 minutes. Doing so can save 1,000 gallons of water per month. So do your part and be water smart. I'm a squad member John and I'm here to encourage you to save water by watering your lawn only in the morning. Doing so miniv minimizes evaporation. Do your part. Be water smart. Hello, this is Aqua Squad member Andreas encouraging you to conserve water by installing lowflow showerheads and low volume toilets. Do your part and be water smart. Hello, this is August member Julia Shell encouraging you to save water by collecting rain water to water your plants, shrubs, and trees. Do your part. Be water smart. Do your part. Be water smart. [Music] [Applause] I want to hang out with you guys. Y'all pretty cool. Hello, we are Aqua Squad. Thank you for having us here today. We are here to talk to you about our water issues and

[0:41:00] how we are working hard to find answers. Aqua Squad is a group of middle school students who educate the community by holding events and mentoring at schools. Aqua Squad is a part of the center of creative energy which includes SISD, SAFA and uh UCIA. We are funded by an IMLS grant. Today we will tell you about our trip to San Diego and our recommendations for the city. This map shows all of the major watersheds in Texas. As you can see, the number 14 wershed is the Colorado River wershed. This is our watershed. The Colorado River actually starts near Leach, Texas, but its wershed extends into New Mexico. This map shows the Col the Koncho River wershed is part of the Colorado River watershed. The Koncho River wershed has four main three main rivers and four reservoirs. The three rivers are the north, south, and mil Koncho rivers with the reservoirs being OC Fiser, O Ivy, Twin Butes, and Lake Nazwsworthy. St. Angelo relies on surface water including a portion from Oivy. We are in the process of building a pipeline to an aquifer 60 mi east of here to help meet our water needs. Due to a serious drought in 2011 that is still going on, our city is even more focused on this problem water supply than ever before. As you can see, there have been many uh headlines in our local paper about this issue. The drought is affecting the entire region. Both the towns of Robert Lee and Lano both have to get water trucked in because they ran out of water. As you can see, OC Fiser has gone completely

[0:43:03] dry. We are still affected by this drought. The average rainfall in St. Angelo is 20 in. During the drought, we only got nine, but because of our recent rains, we got 21 in, but we are still in a serious drought. This shows that our lake levels are basically what they were in 2011. We strongly recommend that a focus on conservation is maintained. We know that many citizens wanted us to stay in Jot level three or at least jot level two. um higher water rates and a focus on conservation is what is important and that is what is communicated with more severe drought levels. We're going to turn to a moment for water quality. As Aqua Squad, we are concerned about this as well. When it doesn't rain for a a while, our water quality can get really bad. It is concentrated. Storm water pollution occurs. When it rains, it picks up all the pollutants on the ground, such as oils, fertilizers, pesticides, and trash, and washes it to the nearest lake or pond. In our case, the Contra River. Our river is officially impaired, according to the EPA, due to high levels of bacteria and low dissolved oxygen. In the top left, there's a picture of a sewage leak found in San Angelo. As you can tell, this is a problem and can contribute to our high levels of bacteria. In the top right, in the top right there is algae grown from fertilizer runoff, which is whenever you spray too much fertilizer on your lawn and when it rains, it washes it down into the river. The bottom picture was taken in downtown area and is an example of non-point source pollution or storm water runoff. Uh this reduces our water quality drastically. While in San Diego, we we found out that

[0:45:06] San Diego has many of the same water issues that we do. We also got to visit the frozen zoo with Dr. Ryder. We got to tour the San Diego River watershed and we got to present to the Safar the Safari Park people and we got to tour the wetland project. We also went to the San Diego Zoo where we met the director, Mr. Doug Meyers. We found out how much he cares about the environment and how he wants to save animal habitats around the world. We also went to the Museum of Photographic Arts where we learned how to take pictures that will make our audience react in different ways. Here we are with our tour guide, James, showing off the pictures we took that day. When we got back, we started thinking of not only what how we're going to communicate this using art and activities, but what are we doing and what more can we do as a city? The city can cities can do many things to not only conserve water, but to help keep it cleaner. One is putting in a vortex separator, which has worked so well in St. Angelo that we're happy that there are plans to put in more. This system uh takes water from the river or pumps it through storm drains when it rains and filters out debris. We can also put in more filtration crates such as this one that filter out filters out debris before it gets to the water. The most important thing we can do to stop the the most important thing we can do is to stop the problem before it begins. Otherwise, it's like putting a band-aid on a problem and not really fixing it. This is harder to do but worth it. To educate our community, the city and UC has put up billboards like the one you see here. UC water educations education center also has hands-on activities that teach people about what's in our water and how to conserve it. We also participate in local fairs, school programs, and help groups with water projects. Um, putting

[0:47:10] public service ads in people's bills also helps. Here are a few solutions, especially as it relates to water conservation. This is a serious issue in our community and we need to make changes fast. In a study uh along the Rio Grand in cities in both New Mexico and Texas found that there are three uh most popular solutions involving water conservation. The first is having drought tolerant landscapes and yards. The second is using public education campaigns and the third is water audits to check for leaks. Um the next four are a little less popular but still effective. Using gray water for landscape watering, having drip irrigation incentives, the reuse of city waste water, and restricting outdoor watering. There will be a rainwater harvesting workshop on November 10th sponsored by the Upper Colorado River Authority and the city of St. Angelo. In the same study, we've found that there the three least preferred and least feasible solutions which include offering rebates, restricting landscapes, and increasing price to reduce use. As a part of our job as Aqua Squad, we presented a photo exhibit um focused on our water issues titled Crisis in the Concho. These are some of the photos that were on exhibit. If you um some of the pictures will be at the UC building if you would like to see them. Um, oh, I'm sorry. Um, we believe that St. Angelo can do much better for a river and um, our water supply issues. We encourage the city coun council and

[0:49:14] the community to focus on conservation and to bring us together to do that. We have the attention of our citizens and we can't let them down now. St. Angelo has the opportunity to be um, leaders in West Te leaders in West Texas in terms of water. Thank you for opportunity to be here. So, do you have any questions? I have one. Oh, yeah. I have one. Which one of you came up with the idea of us taking a shower in less than five minutes? Is that possible? Yes. I find that kind of hard to even fathom. So, thank you. Question. Do you find as students out there and looking at our water uh situations here in St. Angelo, do you find there are sufficient trash recepticles in public areas that uh people can use instead of throwing things in the water or on the ground? You're out and about in places that I'm not. So, I'm asking you, do you think there are enough trash cans? Um um I think that we might need more, but I think that we people just won't like they fly out of the tra they fly out of the trash cans or like people just will throw them on the ground. So, okay, to to um help support some of your effort on we there was a press release sent out recently, but I want to remind everyone uh that November the 1st was the date that under drought level one, which is what we're under right now, you're not allowed to water except for every 14 days on your lawn. So water conservation continues to be very important and I'm sure you learned this in your program but the the city's water use uh has gone from oh a high of around 28,000 acre feet 20 somewhere around there to an average now of around 14 or 15,000 acre feet. So that I want you to hear that conservation in this community is working. People are making the right decisions and doing some good things.

[0:51:18] There are other area West Texas cities that use well gosh uh 75% or more water uh more water than we do with uh with maybe u 6,000 more residents. So you can be proud of the fact that there really is some conservation work being done in this city and there has been for some years now and that's really the councils before us and and the city uh citizens and the efforts that they've made. Anyway, we continue to make progress in that and we appreciate your uh presentation this morning and we appreciate you uh getting educated to all the facts and and caring about what the city looks like and and how we do. So, thank you all very much for presenting to us this morning. Okay, good job. Very good job. [Applause] Item number 14. Item number 14 is the second public hearing in consideration of adopting an ordinance amending appendix A. This is a fee schedule related to a fiscal year 201213 budget regarding the abandoning of ride ofways. This was requested by council member Farmer and the presentation today is by our budget manager Morgan Trainer. Good morning. I have this presentation uh before you that we we've been over before. Recall that items 14 and 15 are the um are two ordinances that would enact these um fees here. Uh you have listed here the current fee and what we proposed uh back in July during budget discussions. And then of course we took city council's direction that we we split the difference and took uh multiple years to to get to where we should be. So instead of going to the 100% cost, we're going to just 50%. So for example, administrative plat $400, it's uh

[0:53:22] proposed at $212.50. There's one item rightway abandonment, it's the item 15. Uh next, it has to be on a separate ordinance because it's a little different. I just want to add that um I've heard from each of us at various times from one time or another through the years that the city needs to act more like a business and respond more like a business and to do better uh at services. And one of the things that we also need to do to ensure this is that we are charging the appropriate fees for those services. You know, looking at a 50% increase is is looks outrageous and high and and unheard of, but whenever we don't pay attention to the fees, as time goes by each year, when we do not review what our services are actually costing us, we're not doing a good job. Uh that's something that we must stay on top of. We we can't continue to give away professional services and these fees and these jobs and expect our finances to be in good shape. And and the other thing is if we were a real business and we were charging these low fees, we would lose our pants and we'd be bankrupt a long time ago. And so this is a mistake that is to it took place a long time ago and we're just trying to catch it up and it may look like a giant jump but that really means a giant mistake in the past that we're trying to to rectify. I I see it like you do. We should be running our business here. At the same time, we also and I hope I'm in agreement and I I think we have to do things. You know, you don't want to go years and years not raising your fees and then all of a sudden you realize, golly, we get a fraction of what it costs to perform that that function. And so you look, well, what happens then is

[0:55:24] who whoever is paying sales tax and whoever is paying property tax particularly is supplementing this uh organization. And so what it does is it sets it up where we have to have high property tax rates uh to create enough dollars to to take care of the city's needs. And if we will if we will stay focused on this, what we can do is is do the right job of charging what it costs to do some of these things to the to these builders in this case and and folks who are who are doing these functions, which then allows us to take a vote to reduce the property tax rate so that the people that are not using these fees don't supplement these fees for people. And I think if we don't do that, we're raising taxes. So, I think we need to look for our opportunity to reduce the rate uh as an offset against some of these things. So, I hope that's where we're headed is that we're we're changing tax policy. We're not just looking for ways to increase cost to the citizenry, but we're looking for ways to balance things and and uh charge the person using the service more so that we can reduce the cost to the people not using the service and reduce our property tax rate, which is not good for our economic development, not not fair to people that aren't using the services and and so forth. Anyway, that's my perspective. I'd like to make another point also. Um, I know a lot of times we tend to want to follow the consumer price index when you look at on a yearly basis, how much inflation's gone up. Texas Municipal League's actually done a study as far as municipal multiplier, how much our uh, you know, how much inflation cities actually witness on a year-by-year basis. Their averages actually come out more to 6 to 8% because of the type of materials that we use. uh for example street uh we have oil products um asphalt and so forth that uh it goes with the the price of oil a lot of times uh the inflation is a lot higher so that's something we have to keep in mind also and uh absolutely make sure that we

[0:57:26] review our fees on a yearly basis motion to approve okay I have a motion to approve and a second do we have oh of of course do we have further comments exactly what I was going to say Mr. Morrison. Further comment before I call for the vote and then I need to get to public input also. Mr. Morrison to talk about what Paul says. If a business in town were to double their prices, let's say my Exxon station up here besides $3.20 is not enough for gas. So we're we really want to go to $6.40, but we're instead just going to cut it in half and we're going to go to $4.50. M they wouldn't be they wouldn't make but one income tax. They wouldn't have to file income tax but one time. That's not what I said. It's okay. Mr. Mr. Alexander, let him finish and then I'll recognize you and let you let you have your your time. Mr. Morrison, no one but a bureaucracy can quadruple prices and fees like this. We have we patted oursel on the back in the last 10 years that we have reduced property taxes by 10 cents. Then we came back with storm water a $2.7 million which is almost 9 cents. We gave a cent back a half cent back. This time we said we're giving a half cent back on property tax which accounted for $180,000. Now we come back with increased fees that are almost $250,000. These somebody pays for these fees. The the developers are not going to absorb them. They are going to pass them on. Our citizens are of the ones that pay for these fees. And regardless of whether we hit them with taxes from the front door or we fee them from the back door, our citizens are still paying. This is an increase in the cost of living in this city. I have no problem with charging a fee or increasing a fee by five, six, or as our manager says, if they go up 6 to 7% in a year, then take it from 37.50, put 6% on

[0:59:30] there and take it up. I have no problem with that. But when you take it from 3750 to 118 and then planning on next year taking it to 200, that is excessive. And our people are paying for this. It's it's excessive. It is wrong. And our citizens are paying for these prices. So, okay. Thank you, Mr. Alexander. If that gas station were charging $160 for years, that's the equivalent. And then we raised the 3 hour. So that's the equivalent. But but I'm listening and I'm looking for a solution here. And really to vote yes for these increases without a guarantee that the tax rate will go down next year when we we plan our budget, that's a tax increase. And I won't vote for a tax increase. So I don't know how to guarantee that this will translate into lower taxes, property taxes, but it has to. It has to. Well, if if I may respond to that and to me, um, property taxes did go down this year, this year's budget and last year's, and this is a fee increase for now. U, it only affects property tax affects everybody in St. Angelo that owns property and they all benefit from that decrease. This only affects the users of the fee and it does not affect the people who've already live in their subdivisions, live in their homes, the little people who pay their property taxes and the people on fixed incomes. This doesn't affect them. This affects growth. Okay. It appears to me that one of the ways we can lower property taxes is, as it's already been stated, staying on top of our fees as they increase. I agree that it's it's it's a tough pill to swallow when you come when we go to the citizens and say, "Hey, look, this

[1:01:31] service is going to go up and it's going to go up 40%." But we have to take in consideration that it hasn't gone up in the last 8 or 10 years. So if you were to divide that over eight or 10 years, then it's really not that much. The hard part with dealing with this is is or or what I see is is we just we we don't want to stay in step with inflation because we don't want to burden our citizens. But it's it's it's we also u drop the ball when we allow the cost of living, the cost of supplies, inflation, and other things to affect our rates. and we do not raise them as the cost of doing business goes up. We then do our citizens an injustice. Uh and so we have to stay on top of this. We have to know what the what's going up when and we have to raise our prices accordingly. If we don't if we don't then we'll be doing this always. And I understand people are going to always have a well you guys went up 2% last year. You went up 2% this year. You went up 2% this year. Okay. Well, let's at 6% in three years. Would you rather have 2% over 3 years or would you rather us not do anything for three years and then just come to you and say, "Hey, it's going up 6%." Right. I I guess my take is, you know, conceptually I'm I I'm in favor of of more of a feebased uh budget as opposed to a tax-based budget. And I know there's, you know, we're not doing a complete shift on the thing. And I mean I was I was relatively critical of the budget process and and so I'm I too I conceptually this works provided that we have the comprehensive look at what we're trying to look at long term and that is that if the fees go up and this is something that needs to be addressed on a regular basis. We talked about it in civic events when we're renting this facility

[1:03:34] and what do we go 3 four years before we raise the price of this. Come on. I mean, that's ridiculous. We need to be looking at these things on a on a regular basis. And provided that's the direction we're going and we're not just adding new money into the coffer, then this can work. But it it's got to be, you know, a kind of a a shift in that whole methodology. And we don't have a guarantee, Paul. We don't. I mean, the guarantee is really all of us up here kind of buying into that program. And and that's something that Mr. Dana and I have talked about and Daniel and I have talked about that I think would be very beneficial for all of us to have to get together so we're all kind of understanding the methodology of the budget process and where we're going long term and I'm rambling now but that's okay that's okay I ramble a lot mayor I want to add something Mr. Silas. Yeah. I just wanted to add, you know, over the past years that I've been on council, thank God that we've been a able to lower property tax, but then you turn around and uh and and I'm I'm trying to understand this myself because you turn around and then the the school district gets rid of the t the 20% exemption, you know, on property tax. And so, I'm sorry, homestead exemption. And uh we seem to have been doing well because even this last fiscal year, we ended up with what was the surplus after the property tax came in? Uh a million, $2 million, three million, I don't remember. 1 million. Okay. $1 million. That's where I have problem understanding. You know, we've done well without these increases. Why Why do we need them? But that's but the issue is the issue from from several people's perspective. The issue is it's not it's

[1:05:38] that if we have these increases and let them keep up with the cost of providing the services, we ought to be able to take that 78 cent tax rate down to 72 cents down to I mean we ought to be able to buy that down a lot. Okay? So then a person that has a $100,000 house or a $50,000 house gets relief. And if they're not remodeling their house or building a new house or, you know, adding on to their business, they're not paying this permit fee. But right now, they're supplementing it because they have to pay 78 cents of tax rate uh to make all of our ends meet. What I'm what I'm espousing is, you know, let's get some of these things in line with where they need to be so that we can get that property tax rate down significantly. The people that we compete against have tax rates in the 50s, 56 cents, 57 cents, 66 cents, numbers like that. Tyler has a tax rate of 21 cents. I think a 78 cent property tax rate really hurts us from an economic development perspective and really hurts our citizens. I I believe our citizens are asked all of our citizens are asked to pay for things because individual citizens aren't asked to pay as they go. Uh so that's my perspective. I'd really like to see that tax rate really come down. Uh so that's I see this as a trade-off and and then that's what Paul and and Mr. Hurstfield are talking about. And the discomfort is, you know, we we would be talking about raising this now in the the other foots has to fall where when you do your budget process, you've got to lower your property tax rate uh to make it to keep it from Did I hear that? We we have not had increases in these since 2008. I guess my question is why do why did we wait four years? And then the other question is this 50% increase, is it going to happen again next year? Is that what we're saying? The planning fees have not were changed older than 2008 ago. That was the ambulance fees. I believe planning fees have not changed in quite some time. Um

[1:07:42] we have talked about uh during budget changing these fees um several budget cycles. This is um the year we kind of really proposed something and the the plan was to take two years to phase in the fee as it should be at the appropriate fee for what it costs to render the service. So the end us the end users would be people remodeling their homes or people constructing companies out there or what what what am I what am I looking at? It's the end users. Who are the primary end user on these developers? Uh people building businesses in town. Um people requesting zone changes so they can put in businesses places. It's you're not it's generally not your average homeowner building a house, building a Okay. mean, right? I I have a motion in a second. I need to allow public input and uh and then I need to call for a vote. Yes, my name is Jim Turner. A lot of what I am going to be addressing is probably been touched on a little bit. You've already touched on other cities tax rates, etc. But one of the things you do need to take from businesses and one of the few things that fits when you're doing stuff like this is you really do need to look at how you're pricing things and what the impact of price in one area has in another area. to a large degree. You have to remember that some of these fees you've got here, a low fee can also be a loss leader that encourages economic development. If they can get started on a project cheaply, that over the next 5 years is going to bring in significant increase in property tax because the property value went up. You don't want to set your fees so high that you discourage that. So, it's a balancing act. And really what council has done for the last several years when it comes to fees outside of things like the water

[1:09:45] and sewer, you've just ignored it and the business wouldn't succeed doing that at all. This needs to be part of every budget discussion every year, every budget cycle, sometimes twice a year. Unless you start doing that, you're going to be in exactly this situation in a very short time. And there's probably things that you haven't even looked at that are other revenue streams you have control over that not only have the direct impact that this fee pays for this service today, but it either encourages or discourages growth or problems later. We don't do that as a city very well at all. We need to really get a lot better at that. And we do have to be careful when we're setting fees like this that we don't take and cut our growth just because we're discouraging people that have been putting off projects and say, "Why should I bother when the fee went up this much?" Cuz that initial sticker shock even though they're going to be paying thousands and more in property taxes over the life. We have to make sure that we don't set fees in such a way that we're discouraging the very thing that's going to get us out of this situation, which is a more valuable city to where you are paying taxes on a more valuable piece of property, even a same amount, which is something Mayor New's been talking about for quite a while. We're going the only way we can get out of a situation where it's a balancing act of fees versus taxes is to grow our way out by encouraging the uh free enterprise free market system to grow here. We're not very good at that as a city right now. Thank you. Okay. Other public input. Okay. I do. Okay, sir. These fees that we charge are not absorbed by the developers. When a developer pays these additional fees,

[1:11:49] every one of these fees are put into the price of that house. That house price is if it's financed, that goes into the bank. It's then interest paid upon it. Just like these storm water fees, these companies that are paying $2 and $300 a month for storm water are not absorbing those fees. They are putting it in the price of their product. Whether it be an automobile we buy, whether it be groceries we buy, all of these fees, whether they be t whether we call them taxes or fees are charged to the individual. So on the end, the taxpayers of this city are the ones that are paying for these additional fees. So, it's not something that just one man pays for when he develops property with these fees are all added into the price and we all pay for that. The city needs to live within its budget just like everyone else in this city. We gave them almost $2 million more money in their budget this year. We increased the budget over last year. The city needs to live within their budget and we cannot give $180,000 back with the right hand and take 250s back with the left and that's all these are. Fees are backdoor tax increases and we all pay for them. Okay, sir. Um I I have one question for Mr. ordained because of the budget process the at the end of the day we passed a budget leaving a surplus. Okay, these fees are expected in uh to meet the budget that we passed or will or will increase the surplus? Which one? I believe we included these, didn't we? During budget discussion, the plan was to implement these fees October 1st. Since the item was tabled and and requested to be moved effective January 1st, there is going to have to be a budget amendment um for the items that were not put in place October 1st. Did

[1:13:52] we include how much did we include? Did we include these fees? Correct. These fees at the 50% increase effective October 1st. So, not the 250,000. Correct. So, mayor the the the issue is these are included in that surplus. If this passes, the budget is good as passed. If this does not pass the that will reduce that surplus and uh you're you have delegated authority to the city manager to execute that budget amendment by how much? 125,000. Okay. Morgan, you're hearing a question of what is the surplus and what would this do to the surplus if we don't did not pass this? Sure. The budget, the general fund budget was adopted with $618,000 revenue in excess of expenditure due to the fact we did not implement this October 1st. That surplus will be reduced every month that we delay implementing fees. Got that? But if we if we did not pass this today, the planning fees alone account for about $12,000 increased revenue um to the general fund budget. So your $618,000 if we didn't approve any planning fees at all would become $66,000. Yeah. 6065. Thank you. 12,000 per per month per year. 12,000 for the entire year. You've lost maybe a,000. You're talking about an $11,000 type of number. So, you know, I made a statement that we had delegated authority to the city manager. I know specifically we have authority to reduce revenues and expenditures a like amount when we've passed a balanced budget. Because we have not passed a budget recently with a surplus, we'd have to review that to make sure. We might have to bring that back to council if we were reducing revenues only to red reduce a surplus. We we may not have contemplated that possibility and that may need to come back to council. Unless so what? Reduce expenses. Yeah, he that's uh he has you you know what I want unless it passes. But now again I'm

[1:15:57] saying to you that the net effect of this is that a $618,000 surplus. Okay. Would become $66,000. Okay. Okay. Let me call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Those opposed? Nay. Nay. Okay. Uh, put that as a 5 to2 vote, please. I'm excited for the budget process to start. It's really, it's really important that you guys are, you know, I'm that we keep our eye on that tax rate. So, okay. Why I'd like for that to start. Okay. I mean, we've got to keep an eye on the tax rate. This has got to be part of a tax policy change. I'm writing an email to you, Kendall. It's a calendar item that pops in front of our face. first meeting in June that we have to reduce taxes on a calendar. Is your email relating to a matter that's being No, no, it's a calendar reminder. Okay. Okay. Public session. Can we say this in public session or not? Well, let's go ahead and we'll talk about it later. Okay. Pertain to what the public can hear. Okay. ready to call the meeting to order. We were about to start item number 15. One thing that I that I need to clarify, make sure everyone on council knows and that we're clear with the public on these these items were uh delayed for to be heard when uh Mr. Valenuela was here and they were to go into effect January the 1st if passed. So not not October the 1st, but January the 1st. And so I want to be clear on that. This is item number 15. Also would be a January the 1st implementation date. This is a second public hearing in consideration of adopting an ordinance amending the fee schedule uh regarding uh planning related fees. This item uh that item 15 is just I need Nathan wherever Nathan is. My computer's gone crazy. Mine too, but I'll go by the

[1:18:01] paper one. Okay. Excuse me, Morgan. That's fine. You'd like to hold for a moment, sir? No. You want to go ahead and let him work while we're listening? Okay. So, item 15 is just for the rightway abandonments. This item that uh the current fee is $318 and the proposed fee is $434. This item has different laws that govern it. So, it's under a separate ordinance, a separate agenda item. Okay. So, it's the right-of-way abandonments. Correct. Okay. Do I have uh comments or questions on this for her? Motion to approve. Second. I have a motion to approve and a second. Do I have uh public input on this item? Yes, sir. Okay. Let me call for the vote on this. I wrote it down. It keep going. I have the same comments on this that I had the last I'm sure to the exact same results, but it's still wrong. Okay, call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Those opposed. Nay. I'll I'll nay those. Item number 16. This is a presentation uh and update on the following water related issues and any action in connection there too related to the Hickory water supply project, the water quality report and public communication regarding water issues. Our presentation is by our water utilities director Will Wy and uh by by a Corollo representative. Okay, mayor and council, our first part of this will be the update on the Hickory uh project. Uh it's it's really fitting to note on this this time of the year. Uh this time last year, uh the first contracts for the construction of the Hedrick Hickory project were awarded. So we're now one year into the actual construction phase of the Hickory water supply project. So, uh, with us this morning is Hutch Misullum, the project manager from Corolla, uh, our engineers for this project here, and

[1:20:03] he'll give you the status report and update on the various portions of the project. Thank you. Awesome. Good morning. Um, we're going to spend a few minutes today give you an update of uh, the progress for this project. As you remember uh this project was divided into four uh phases or four different construction uh sections. The wellfield piping, the transmission main uh the booster pump station and wellfield development and the treatment. U later on we'll talk about u Greg and Will will talk about some THM compliance strategies and we're going to open it to questions and and discussions. the wellfield piping. Most of you may know this, but uh this is the project that will alluded to. Uh construction, you know, we started with it last year and construction is 100% complete. Uh contract close out underway with the Texas Water Development Board. So, uh that that's that's one is one one's down there. Excuse me. Does that include all the wells? Even the additional No, no, this is all the existing nine wells. not not the additional wells. The additional wells have not been the the construction or the design on on this particular portion has not been started. Um some some of the work has been done, but we're waiting on the environmental right now for the new wells. You're going to give us an update on that. Uh we can talk a little bit about it. I'm not prepared. It's not part of this presentation, but we can talk about the new wells if you like. I'll ask questions later. Okay. uh transmission main uh the notice to proceed is January 23rd, 2012. Um this if you remember that was supposed to have a notice to proceed of uh November uh or October of that year but we were delayed about 3 months because of some additional reviews for the Texas Water Development Board and we were not allowed to start construction till that day. Consequently, the substantial completion date is now was

[1:22:07] became July 16 because we allowed 540 calendar days for this work. Uh final completion is September 14, September 14, 2013. And the current status uh we looks like we're about 45% complete based on the dig lake bar and other apparatus that have been installed in the pipeline. So um if you look at and some of you may be familiar with this uh overall site map the uh construction started um you know on the ground in May 2012 um you we had two crews one was you know one was led by Oscar Renda and one is led by um SJ Lewis they're subs and um you know when one you know starts from the center line going to the wellfield and one going to San Angelo. Looks like we have a little bit over 28 miles right now. Uh work progressing at both lay headings. You know, we are slightly behind schedule overall schedule, but looks like we're catching up and getting closer to the plan schedule. Um you know, when it comes when when you have when you have rocky areas, when there's rock, um obviously it hinders the schedule a little bit. when uh when it's clay, it's easy to go through this that that area. And you can see if you look at daily reports, you see a lot more uh lot more linear footage for these particular times. Um valves, a pertinances, um taps are all ongoing with the delay berry. Um I'm going to also show a few pictures. What is that? Aert pertinance. What is valves um vaults, air release valves, things of that nature. call it uh apparences uh taps, customer taps. This was we took this picture station

[1:24:08] 2624 Osburn crop field. You see the pipe um covered um in plastic on the ground. Uh you know obviously this was uh solid rock and that's very difficult to to ex excavate. Um it's just a picture we decided to show. Um this is just general pictures of Digleberry. Uh and um you know one way of breaking the rock, trying to break the rock here with this hammer. Also uh just you know some people may ask well why some of these things can be delayed at times and the reason is you know even though this is in the middle of nowhere you know some of us may think it's in the middle of nowhere but there are utilities along the way and this picture shows a couple uh gas lines here uh right right above where we're going to have to install pipe. So things things happen and you have to um you know take a step back make some modifications to the construction and proceed. Booster pump station in Wellfield. Um the order to proceed is uh was June 18, 2012. Uh substantial completion is June 18, 2013. Um final completion is July 17, 2013. These are contractual dates that were um you know part of the contract with between the city and the contractor. Um to date we are on schedule based on the reports based on our observation of the construction and you know submittal process etc. uh access road around the pump station has been complete except for some uh spots around the black cap vario area where we could not where the contractor was unable to access at that time. Booster pumps and well pumps are in fabrication. The engineering review has been conducted and they're in fabrication. The booster pump booster

[1:26:11] pump cans are on site. Uh cleaning and video of wells, you know, nearly complete. There's still a few things and I will uh talk about it in a in a minute. It's just a nice picture that u it's a for it's for a meter vault number one um that measures water. It has some valves. It's right before the pump station, the booster pump station. It's a it's a quite a good size vault that uh that the contractor dug dug in. And so we thought we'll share that picture. So I just wanted to briefly talk about the existing wells, wells one through nine. And uh you know these wells were drilled back in the 70s. And uh when we were doing the the design, we conducted um preliminary video surveys of the wells just to see what they what we think what they look like. And um you know they we identified some obstructions. I mean, you know, sometimes we didn't exactly know what it was, but we identified some some obstructions and uh going to TCQ during the design, they required that all wells be cleaned um and that um you know, all wells be cleaned and that there's if anything rem you know remove any debris or obstruction that we noted in initial video survey followed by new videos and pumping to confirm conditions of the well and this is the the set latter part will be will have to be done I mean it's being done right now and in the will be done in the future as well in the next month or two. So where we where are we on the cleaning? Um looks like u cleaning and video is complete for wells 1 3 and 8. Um casing is in good condition. The existing casing uh cleaning work ongoing for wells 2 5 6 and nine and we're about to start videos.

[1:28:15] Um well number four that there was an obstruction that was identified in the in the early videos. So we cleared that only to encounter another obstruction and it's some type of a rubber plug and we don't know why it was there but we are looking at options working with the contractor and working with the uh sub with the well cleaning subcontractor to remove the second obstruction. And we believe that we have a we have a solution um that would that would work. Uh well number seven initial cleaning complete. The video revealed a split in the casing at 65 ft deep. Um basically the proposed repair is to press or sway a sleeve inside the uh the casing kind of like when you have a um stint done. some pictures uh well brush fabrication. These brushes are actually um um many not many you know they done on site because it's so specific to the well size and so these big these big uh steel pipes are brought to the site and then the brushes uh uh are installed. Um this is just a general picture of brushing and cleaning of of one of the wells. U following the brushing uh the wells are purged to clean that water inside. This is just one of the pictures. This looks like a a lot there just probably this is well number four that had the obstruction. So there was a there was a a contraction and then it's going to fall the uh caused the water to purge like this. You know, this is a picture of the uh sub subcontractor showing this obstruction. It's it's kind of like a plastic chunk, but we didn't know what caused it and where it came from. And then last, we're going to talk

[1:30:17] a little bit about the treatment plan design. Uh if you remember last towards the uh last June, end of last June, we made a selection to go with the single-use uh iron exchange and we started um with an expedited schedule to get this thing uh to expedite the schedule. We uh we are preparing or we've prepared procurement documents for the selection of the ion exchange um ion exchange equipment and not you know the radium removal system and to select the radium removal system supplier. Happy to say that this uh procurement documents is complete that it should be advertised hopefully uh this week and after that we will make that selection of who that radium removal system supplier is. Once that comes in and hopefully we'll have that within a month after that then we will take this information incorporated in the overall design of the plant of the groundwater facilities expansion and should have the plans and specs uh on this street in March 2013. Uh this is an expedited schedule. Typically it would take a little bit longer than this but we uh we're trusting and we're hoping that um we will be definitely able to meet this schedule. construction start should be June 2013. Uh obviously uh in you know just pending TCQ and Texas Water Development Board approval, we're allowing a couple months of reviews. Hopefully uh hopefully we are correct uh to uh we we went ahead and there was a lot of question in a lot of in the city's mind and our minds about how how do you know how do these radium removal systems work and did you are you going to go back to completion date? I mean you just gave us the start date. Yeah, the completion date if you look at the uh um a previous council meeting um that

[1:32:24] that uh we did was going to be sometime between uh June and September of 2014. So we will try to make sure that at least the groundwater facilities are finished in June. You know, give them a year to finish it. There'll be some potentially some more additional work in the surrounding areas that may may take a couple three months more. We'll give you a more bigger a better update next time on this one. Okay. Um so there's a lot of concern about how these systems operate and as San Angela the only the only city that's using uh single use exchange for radium removal. So we did our research and found out that areas south of New Jersey and southern New Jersey they have been using they have had radium for many years and they have been using the exact same technology single use sign exchange for many years. Um they don't have surface water. So these these facilities and these communities uh strictly use groundwater and that groundwater has radium at levels comparable to what we're seeing here. And uh we looked at three three facilities uh in Vineland, New Jersey, upper upper in Deerfield, New Jersey, and uh there's one for Aqua, New Jersey, Southern Division. I can't remember the exact the exact lo local city name. um you know the range the the service ranges between 2006 and 2009 when it started and the reports were very good based on our discussions with the staff and what we saw and I'm going to show a few pictures. Uh this is the u you know on the left the blue is a radium removal system. Um, and you you can see these are about um I would say 14 foot uh diameter vessels and they are uh they're

[1:34:30] all uh um downflow actually, excuse me, they are they're upflow and um you know water goes water goes and then it gets filtered and then just goes goes to the second you know to the second vessel. Um and some more pictures and so uh with that I will take questions. The completion dates the transmission line uh the thought process is the transmission line should be done somewhere around uh the July one time frame of 13. Does that sound right? The contractual substantial completion date for the transmission main the contract between the city and the and the contractor is uh July I believe allows until July 17. Um and that's based on 540 calendar days from the time it it started. Okay. But that's of 2013. Yes. What did I say? Okay. Did I miss it? I don't know. Um, yeah, let me look. I'm sorry if I did. There you go. July 17th, 2013 was on your screen. Yeah, this is final completion. Let me Yeah. Substant. It's July 16, 2013. Okay. Uh, the booster pumps and the station and those things, what are what are you saying? is the the uh completion date on that process. It looks like it's June um June 18. That that's the contractual substantial completion date. The treatment plan, the treatment plan, we are currently in

[1:36:35] design. And we're on an expedited design schedule and we are consistent with the schedule uh that we presented last time to council somewhere between July and September of 2014. Yes. Is that what you said? Yeah. Okay. So, so when is the uh the ion process going to go out for bid? Well, it's actually a selection. We were going to start with a selection of the um system supplier. Right. And I understand when and it's actually right anytime hopefully what like today like it can go tomorrow. Yes. Great. Yes. What about uh one other piece of it and then and then the uh new wells completion of the new wells and tying into the system. Um my last number is January of 2014. I believe that there was discussion in the last council meeting on that schedule. Um I don't have the schedule on me. Um but we can we can look at it. We we uh I don't know if it is January 2014 or not. Is that is that schedule with with us? I'm looking at it. Yeah, it would be sometime in 2014 dependent upon a lot of different factors depending on what we find as far as the environmental reviews depending what the reviews of the state and agencies come about but say mid 2014 to late 2014 and I can tell you this already we've done the preliminary some of the preliminary environmental particularly the bird habitat review those reviews we've got those reports already back right now and almost the entire area where the new wells are going in is black cat habitat area so that means right there alone. Construction is limited from generally September, the end of September through the middle of March each year. So that's going to right away already affects what we were looking on scheduling. We're working right now with the US Fish and Wildlife, the Texas Parks and Wildlife to see if there's some other type of

[1:38:36] activities we might be able to go ahead and start performing. But preliminary, just about every one of the new well sites is in a in a protected habitat area. But but you're saying that because of that you'll be looking for we have to work between September through March generally. Yeah. That's to drill to drill the wells, right? Okay. Well, that is that that is exactly in line with what you had showed us last time the time and I I just uh Yeah, I I I would like to I mean we can get look at that. Uh I have it here. You have it? Yeah. I don't think anything has changed from that ma, you know, from that schedule that was presented. Well, the only difference again is is that you're showing drilling going well beyond that too that it taken a year to drill. Which I'm not sure I buy. But you don't buy that it's going to take a year to drill. Yes. What What do you think? Five wells. Pardon? Five wells, right? Yes. take a year. That's our preliminary estimates. Do you have that uh schedule? Let me see. It's been a month since I look personally 6 months too long. Uh six to even eight months too long. But for the wells, it's taking two to three months per well. Two months usually you can you'd say per well. Two to three months per well. And we assume two wells being drilled at the same time. And so that's how we estimated that number because they're deep wells. Can you see that? Yeah. This is it. This is what I prepared. It's really hard. Yeah. Actually, this one estimates

[1:40:38] drilling about 14 months. not not a year, it's longer. So that's what we What is that end date? That end date is end of November 2014. That's what um we're estimating. And and you have the ability that the the stuff at the bottom basically could be being done concurrently, couldn't it? Some of it can. Yes, some of it can. Well, how do we move that date back? I mean what the drilling of the wells the whole process. How do we make the completion June June to September of 2014 or July the 1st of 2014? We you know as far as what we're trying to do we can get the plans the the construction documents to get the wells to get out to start doing this in a couple months. I mean that's that's really not that that big of a deal. The problem is nothing can start till all these environmental approvals are underway. And you know, we'll just talk to you about the Black Cap Viru. And there's going to be, you know, once we once we um figure out the the proper locations of these wells. Well, Texas Water Development Board wants a new environmental assessment and a new archaeological survey that we, you know, part of the contract that y'all have approved um 3 weeks ago and we're going we're starting working on that. So, once that is done and it's approved by the Texas Water Development Board, then we can go out for bids on this project. But until then, we can't even go out for bids on this project. So, are we done with the survey with the uh archaeological survey? No, we're not done with archaeological survey. We're just starting it. In fact, we are um we're going to use the contract that we you know, we took the contract that was approved last year and we're going to put a subcontract to a sub consultant to

[1:42:40] do it and they should start in the next couple weeks. Should start. Yes. We did not have a the contract. We need, you know, we as a we needed the contract and between the contract was just given to us and from there we're going to go and get a somebody to do the archaeological survey. I'm ask I heard what your answer was, but I'm I'm asking you a slightly different question then. within our controllables. Yes. What can we do to try to move the date back to July the 1st, 2014? In other words, one of the things we can do is take the two yellow lines, the one roughly in the middle of the page and the one at the bottom, and try to do some of those things more concurrently. Yes, we we are going to, you know, I we talked to the to Will and the folk and the staff. We will try to condense this as much as possible. um you know potentially maybe requesting that you the contractor gets three three drilling rigs as opposed to two. Now whether this is feasible or not is yet to be seen. There's a lot of drilling activity in the area and it's somewhat challenging uh to get these drilling rigs. I know from our experience in San Antonio drilling some wells that we thought initially it'll be about a month uh to two you know and it took about 4 months and there's a lot of approvals lots of TCQ lots of Texas Water Development Board that they need to be involved everywhere and by the time you go send them information it takes three to four weeks sometimes to get it back and in the meantime you know you keep you can you can do what you want to do but if it's not exactly what they want, they'll make you go back and redo it and it becomes very cost, you know, very costly. And so for this particular project, because it's water infrastructure fund, you are not even allowed to start construction until all

[1:44:43] these approvals. Otherwise, you can they will not release the funds. Now, if you if you don't care about the Texas water development funds, there are ways about expediting this project. you know, you say, "Okay, we will there'll be contingency in some of the environmental. We we know that this is uh you know, environmental will be approved, but we want to go ahead and start construction and you know, this is an emergency and then, you know, that's fine, but Texas Water Development Board will not release that the funding." I I and I understand that. I I guess my concern is that on August 21st we gave direction to to get this thing going and yet here we are November 6th and we still haven't done the archeological haven't even started the archaeological well the archaeological survey really is minimal work the the m the the work is so how long for the archae I I I I guess here's my frustration is that I look at this and this is a really nice cartoon and I no offense But my junior high kid can do something better. Absolutely. This is this is not rocket. This truly is a cartoon. And really what I'm looking for is a schedule. Is a schedule. And this not a cartoon. Okay. And that's what I would love to have. I'm a schedul guy. I've been dealing with schedules since I was about that big. I want to see a schedule. You want a construction schedule? I want a construction schedule. Well, the construction schedule will be given to us. put together a CPM schedule for Absolutely. And the contract line, I did this. Y'all didn't do this. Y'all didn't do this. I did this. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. I shouldn't have to do this. I want to schedule. Okay. I don't know who I'm telling. I want a schedule. Okay. With real dates, you know, in this thing of well, some point between this time and this

[1:46:46] time. Yeah, that's kind of what it is. Well, Z, the problem is I can give you I can give you the CPM schedule and make all these estimates. Truly the there is a lot of unknowns. Texas Water Development Board, TCQ, we last last time we thought it was going to take two months, it took four months. So that schedule, I mean it'll be a shifting moving target anyway. I've been in construction since I was that big. Absolutely. Okay. So I understand how schedules go. They move in, they go out. Okay, I understand that. So, give it to me and I'll be happy to look at that. I'll be happy to review it. I'll be happy to see a copy of the updated schedules as they come out. I would love to do that. So, you want a more detailed schedule that shows construction activities? Yes. Typically, we leave the construction activities schedule to the contractor because we're not contractors. We we we tell them to do, you know, they're responsible for the means and methods of the contract and we we have a general schedule that we develop that we realize, okay, this is going to be okay. Do you have a general schedule other than this little cartoon here? No, right now this is all we have because we use it for partic for purposes of uh you know uh studying the overall schedule. No, this is what I have right now. But we can you know I can sit down with you to exactly what you're looking for and we can produce something a more d I'm not looking for anything that that's revolutionary. Absolutely. This is construction 101. Well, and then I say we don't do construction, we do engineering. So this but the whole process is construction. Correct. The whole engineering, the whole process, steps along the way is construction. The whole process. Okay. At this point, I I think we're clear what we're asking. I think I want to try to clarify a little more. Why though? We as a political body, you as a political body, you get feedback and if

[1:48:50] you if you approve something on August 21st and then you get feedback November the 6th and it shows some things that you feel like why why isn't that part already done? The schedule is what allows us to actually see what's going on while while the project is moving. So instead of seeing this, you know, projected timeline that that has no no um I mean it doesn't it doesn't show us where we are in the process. I don't think that any of these schedules that showed back in August or you know that you know I still think let's move from one other to another project. I'm talking about whether it's the transmission line, whether it's the booster station, whether it's the um the treatment plant. It's just nice to see are we falling behind or are we right where we're supposed to be. Not not every six months when we're in a position where if we get a nice rain, we buy 11 months, but if we don't get a nice rain, you know, the the idea that we're going to get the new wells online in November of 2021 isn't acceptable. Mhm. Okay. I mean, we we'll be in a bad out ofwater place or low on water or doing things we shouldn't have to do. So, so in that perspective, we'd like to see the moving parts more often. And so, if we're supposed to have something done, we'd like to be able to look and and and say, you know, is that done? Is that not done? And not every 3 months, every six months, every but kind of as we go, particularly some of us, not not not me as much, but Mr. Hzfeld with the background he has, you you can understand. And I've been through building a lot of commercial buildings, but you can see early on if you're really going to get there. I mean, and you can know that you need to hurry up now, not wait until you're 6 months behind and go, gosh, we're going to have to really hurry up if we're going to get there on time. You try to see the problem is already coming here. Here it is. It's coming. Uh, and we're not going to get there if we don't start making

[1:50:53] some corrections now. We just want to have some of that opportunity. And the reason is because of the sensitivity to what happens with the with the surface water until this water is there. It's you need to have the same sense of urgency about this that we believe me I do and everybody does and we do we have a lot of you know the biggest sense of urgency. We're trying to do everything we can. We meet we met several times face tof face with the regulators to expedite things and and we have been successful and and this project you know we we you know the design of the treatment we uh reduced it by a third of the schedule that we typically do. That's the most I can do. I mean we have everybody on it. Um for the for the for the for the boost for the transmission main we found you know we at the beginning it had a it had a rough start with a contractor you know we're stuck we we have that contractor. So what we're doing is we're we're you know um observing our our inspectors are there a lot long a lot longer hours. You know we're putting 60 70 hours. We have pulled people in. We've hired some local staff. We have people come in and out all the time because we're you know it's not a 40-hour job. It's not a 50-hour job. We are we are basically inspecting 80 hours a week per per per lay heading. So that's almost a time and a half you know. So that's the extra effort that we're doing to expedite this project. there were things that were beyond the the the control and beyond the understanding whether it's a performance issue whether it's a delay that the Texas Water Development Board instigated you know because you know and the the re the only reason we we delayed it is because we want to cons you make sure that we get the funding you know there was u there's an situation whereby some work started clearing and grabbing started like a couple weeks before they before the Texas Water Development Board approved the funds they said we're not paying for this 50,000. That's how critical they are. And so this is on the transmission line. This is on the um you know this is on and we we we got a result. This is on the uh uh pipeline.

[1:52:57] This is on the interconnecting pipeline. But we got that result. But this is how things this is how they do it and this is we want to make sure that we stay above board that we do everything per what they say. And yes sometimes it does delay things and sometimes I don't like it to be delayed. It's good for me and for you too. I mean, from a financial perspective, from anything, it's good for me to get this thing done finished as quickly as possible as well. I mean, I've got I want this I want this you and the citizens of St. Angelo to be happy. Um, that's my primary goal. I'm not a fly by night. I've been working, you know, with St. Angelo for 15 years on various projects. And, uh, you know, believe me, we're trying we're trying a lot. We're trying everything that we can. and we're we're squeezing ourselves. We're we are keeping the keeping the uh the heat on the contractors um you know to to do this. You know what is it perfect? May not always be perfect. Well, understand I know I know you're trying. I know you're doing a good job at what you're doing. Okay. The the thing I've got is that that you know I' I've managed and been responsible for projects absolutely 10 times this size. Okay. So, you know, when I see it's simply managing details and you know, right now I can tell you that we're 8,37 lineal feet behind plan schedule. And that's based upon some original stuff that I was given. And also with that, I'm not sure I agree with your completion dates because that's not what is part of my schedules that were given to me. So, these are the these are the contractual completion dates when we started the project. the you know this is what the contractor can use without being charged liquidated damages at the beginning of the project they felt that they can expedite things so they mentioned that they may be able to finish in June and if they can finish in June that's fine but as far as

[1:55:00] contractual dates with July 16 is the contractual date was that's I'm all right on I'm all right on that because everything I've got all my schedules all my lineal footage all my map layout and plan for you know I've I've plotted how many lineal feet you have to get done in a week correct I mean I have absolutely again I don't think anyone else has done that but I have but uh that's the kind of detail that to me to manage a project properly we have to be doing and it's the same thing we need to be doing with with the treatment it's the same thing we need to be doing with the expanded wellfield and uh the booster pumps station and to to ensure that so we can all sit here and say it will be done period. You know, I don't want to hear and the reason I dove into this is that I didn't want to hear in March or in April that oh well we're going to be behind by 3 months. That's the wrong time to know it. Now is the time to know it. So that's the that's why I'm pressing for more detail and more data today. So if there's things that we can be doing and whether it's funding or not, right, telling you do it today, get it done today as opposed to next month. But we got to know those things. Absolutely. I I'm I'm with you. So I'm I'm not picking on you. I'm not It's just that that's that's the way I was raised. That's the way I look at projects and that's how I try to try to focus on these things. And I'm here to help. I'm not here to hurt. No, I know, Mr. Harshville. I know I know you're here to help and we appreciate all your input by the way and so the difficulty that we see sometimes in these projects is not it's not always linear um you know pipelines you know you know if it's all the same type of bedding material yeah it becomes all linear you know exactly how much you're going to put in the ground but you hit you hit utilities you hit you hit uh uh rock and you know

[1:57:04] you cannot do the projected your projected linear footage per day for that particular section. And so for that a week or a month, you might see a lower a smaller linear foot being laid. Um on the other hand, if you just have a very good area, it's all clay or it's easy to uh to excavate, I mean, you see a lot higher numbers. So that's where it goes up and down. Unfort you know, it's not a some construction activities are more linear. Um obviously on the pump, that's why you got to have an average. You got to have a good average. Yeah. And our average still to this point is not Yeah. I realize and I said in the presentation, I mean, we did have a a rocky start initially with with some of the contractors and and and I think it's it's improving. I think that this overtime that it's been instituted on the inspectors with the with the with the uh contractor things are moving now. Yes, there is room for more improvement and I realize the importance of this project. We'd all realize that. Mr. Silvas, I just have a real simple question and let me first say I totally understand Kendall's frustration cuz you know when you throw out we're running 28 days behind but we're going to catch up and 540 days here and 600 days there that that that's not cutting it. I think we need more clarity. But uh I was totally confused on the bump the booster pump station or stations. How many are we talking about? One. Did I put an heard stations? I've heard both so I didn't know. I thought it was there's one booster pump station and if I said stations that goes in the middle of the pipeline towards the middle or No, actually it doesn't go through towards the middle. It's closer to the wellfield. Okay. It's pushes it down. Yes, there's a push it up or up. Are we up or down? It's actually basically it's a few miles from the well field and then it boosts it up. It pushes it up to about this to about around Eden and from Eden goes down Gravit by Gravit south to St. Angelo. And now the the treatment

[1:59:09] plant will be at our water treatment facility. Yes, sir. That's could I That's where it's going. Uhhuh. That's That's all I have. Okay. I think we've we've we've done a pretty thorough job on the on this part. Can we move to the water quality report? Hutch, could I ask you one thing, please? Yes, sir. I got a I got a call this week from a constituent about one of your employees and a possibility of a conflict of interest. Go ahead. Would you call me sometime this week? I've got my numbers here so I can talk to you. Yes, sir. Okay, so the next part of our discussion today will deal with water quality. Uh, as we've had in discussions this morning, this drought this past year has created very significant challenges for us. not only from the water supply side and on making sure that we do have water available for our our citizens here, but it also has had that ripple effect over in the water quality side of what we deliver to the customers here. Uh, as you can imagine, being a a surface water is our total source right here. As those lakes continue to go down, that water quality becomes worse with time there. And as a result of that, uh, part of the treatment that we do on the water, uh, resulted in an exceedence of an allowable standard set by the EPA, by the Texas Commission on Environable Quality. Uh, this past month, we received a notice from the TCQ that we have to issue a public notice to every water customer here in Stangelo advising them of this exceedence uh, of a compound called a trihillomemethane uh, which is in essence is part of resulting from the disinfection of the water there, our water here. So that notice is being sent out right now. Uh we have here today uh from Corolla, Greg Pope,

[2:01:12] one of the treatment experts with uh Corolla who has worked on looking at how we're going to incorporate the hickory water within our existing facilities and how that'll all work together there. And he's done a lot of work on how how it can affect our existing water qualities and he has done a considerable amount of research particularly on the THMs on the trialmethanes. and we thought it'd be good for him to explain what's going on and why did this uh exceedence occur. So, uh Greg Pope with Corolla. Okay. Well, good morning and it's uh thanks for letting me be here. Um the the crux of the issue with THMS um kind of if you kind of go back to chemistry class, I'm going to show a really basic chemical equation, but essentially it's chlorine um reacts with the natural organic matter that's present in the surface water. And so the natural organic matter, you'll see me call it NOM or NOM. Um it's essentially decayed leaves and sticks that have decayed over time and it kind of it le and it ends up being dissolved in the water. It's kind of like when you make tea, right? Uh there's also a lot of broomemide in the source waters around here. And so the broomemide kind of exacerbates the problem with forming THMs. So we have this equation of chlorine plus NOM plus bromide goes to THMs. and the utility here as well as all over the country face the same balancing act. You know, the the primary goal is to provide disinfection of the water so it's safe to drink. Um now, so so you have to balance providing safe water with with trying not to form these THMs. And so you're kind of always struggling with making sure you provide the primary goal, which is disinfection, but not to form too many THMs. And so a little background on what THMs are. Um, THMs are really four compounds. Um, so it's a family of compounds that are formed from disinfecting water and they are regulated by the US EPA. And so TCQ regulates in the exact same way the EPA does. Um, the maximum contaminant level for the all four compounds added together is 80 micrograms per liter. And they're regulated because some people

[2:03:16] who drink water containing elevated levels of THMs over many years may uh experience health problems. So the EPA's chosen to regulate this group of compounds. Um several factors can impact THM formation. One of the main factors is the source water quality. Um the natural organic matter or nom that's present. Um whether it's the concentration of it or the type of it. Different waters have more nom less NOM. And sometimes the NOM's more reactive or less reactive. It's very water specific. Um broomemide is also a big one. Um there's a quite a bit of broomemide in the source waters around here compared to what you see nationally. Um pH is important. Um with chloromines, the disinfectant that's used here, for example, if you have a higher pH, you typically form less THMs. With chlorine, it actually goes the opposite way. If you were a free chlorination system, the lower the pH, the more THMs you form. So, you know, control strategies are not only water specific, but they're also disinfectant specific. Um, water age is big. It's kind of if you again kind of go back to chemistry class like kinetics of reactions. Um, the longer the chlorine is in contact with the nom, it continues to form THMs. So the longer the contact time, the more you form. So if you can decrease water age, you can maybe decrease some THM formation. disinfectant type, as I alluded to earlier, whether it's free chlorine or chloromines. Free chlorine forms a bunch of THMs, whereas m most utilities in Texas use chloromines because of this THM formation problem. And then disinfectant concentration. The higher the disinfectant concentration, uh, typically the higher the THM formation you see. Um, so how can they be controlled? Um, again going back to this reaction, if you think about all everything to the left of the arrow are the reaction products. every the THMS or the sorry everything to the left is the reactants everything to the right is the product or the THMS. So one thing we can do is instead of using chlorine let's use chloromines. That's what is being done. Um and it and chloromines do

[2:05:19] significantly reduce THM formation. Um another thing is let's remove another one of these reactants. Let's remove the nom that's present. Let's remove the broomemide that's present. So there are several strategies that can be used to do this. Reverse osmosis removes nom, removes broomemide. Um, so waters that are treated with RO typically form much less THMs than waters that aren't. Um, granular activated carbon can absorb the natural organic matter. Again, so we're removing that reactant from the equation. Um, GAC has a limited life though. It doesn't last forever. So it's a constant you're constantly having to change the media. Um pH control is one uh if you uh with chloromines at higher phes you form less THMs. Um ozone is especially if you follow it with bofiltration can work in your water. Unfortunately the bromide concentration is just too high to use ozone. So you actually form another disinfection byproduct called bromate which is just as bad or worse for you than THM. So you might limit THMs but you're forming bromate. So you're not getting anywhere ahead. And chlorine dioxide is very water specific but it can also reduce THM formation. The other thing is to remove the THMS after they form. Um some studies show that biological filtration can remove some THMs. Uh aation is one that that can do that can work. THMs are volatile. So if you provide a lot of air and volatilize them away um you can remove THMs that way. And again, GAC, granular activated carbon. The THMS can absorb to the carbon much like the natural organic matter can. But again, it's a finite life. It does it's not going to last last forever. Um, so like I have alluded to, to limit the DBP formation or THM formation, the city of St. Angelo uses chloromines for disinfection. Um, here's some data that uh just to kind of walk you through the graph. The THM is on the y ais and then essentially the date is on the x axis. So we're showing about a year's worth of

[2:07:20] data here. The blue line represents the THMs formed at the water plant. The green line represents the THMS that were measured at Matisfield, which is in my opinion kind of one of the far reaches of the distribution system. The water age should be one of the highest you see out there. And so you see several things. One is when this data was collected, we're below on average that 80 microgram per liter uh concentration. But the thing that I mean I've been researching THMs and chloromines for a while and the thing that's always struck me by this data is the difference between what's formed at the plant and what's formed way out in the distribution system. Typically with chloraminated systems people use chloromines to limit THM formation. And so you typically see uh just a little bit of additional formation say 5 to 10 micrograms per liter not doubling it. And so this was really unusual. And what we think at the time when we first saw this, we thought, well, maybe it's the broomemide because there is a lot of broomemide in the water. And sure enough, we elev we looked at the individual broomemide levels. And so this uh table shows some key water quality parameters from the existing surface waters, the IV and the Concho River, and compares that to the Hickory aquifer. So we see first off 1.6 milligrams per liter of broomemide and 0.9 milligrams in the Concho River. That's really high when to give you a sense of you know where it is nationally. Uh.3 is a high broomemide level. Um typically most utilities are less than 0.1. And so this is a huge challenge because the broomemide changes the chemistry of some of these disinfectants. The pH is typical you know pH8. The pH of the hickory aquifer is you know 7 and a half. The nice thing here with the hickory aquifer is it's it has a lower broomemide concentration half or more a third of what what it is. So blending these things can maybe can potentially help reduce THMs in that angle. The TOC which is sorry for all the alphabet soup but the TOC is this is how we measure natural organic matter. It's the total

[2:09:22] organic carbon in the water. And so we see the ivy and the Koncho River have 5 7 12 milligrams of this stuff. The hickory has pretty much none. So again, that's one of those reactants in the equation. So blending may help reduce THM formation. And then TDS is shown there too. The hickory water has lower TDS than the uh surface waters as well. Doesn't really impact THMs, but it it does maybe help with taste and perception of the water. Uh so here's some uh bench studies that we did uh where we blended the treated groundwater with the treated surface water. And so this is groundwater that was treated with the ion exchange. Um, again on the y- axis we have THM formation. On the x- axis we have our different blends. So the far left bar is all surface water. The far right bar is all groundwater. Um, the middle bar is a 50/50 blend. So you see it's pretty much linear. The groundwater formed these and these were all disinfected the same way. The groundwater formed almost no THMS. The surface water formed a substantial concentration of them. The 50/50 blend was right in the middle. So again, blending the blending can help with THM compliance. Um, this graph shows uh the current THM formation at the plant. Again, these are bench studies that we performed. And so what we did is we measured the THMs after 30 minutes and then 5 days later, thinking the 5 days was kind of a distribution type sample. And this was done at the the current disinfection pH that the plant uses, pH7 and a half. So you see at 30 minutes, we don't form very many. At 5 days, we're slightly over that 80 microgram per liter MCL. So again, I've been talking about pH a lot and the broomemide. And so what we can do if we raise the pH to 8.3 instead of 7 and a half, we're changing the game. The bro, it kind of takes some of the impact of the broomemide out of the equation just with the background chemistry that's going on. And so we not only form less at 30 minutes, we form substantially less at 5 days. So instead of forming 80, we're not even forming 30. And again, these

[2:11:24] are bench studies, but it's really promising, you know, to see that, you know, to try to, you know, put some of these practices in into place to see if it'll it'll help with THM compliance. So just to summarize uh you know strategies aimed at optimizing the chloromine formation conditions pH is the big one that that we found may help reduce THM formation. Um the bench studies that we performed showed that blending uh showed promise to reduce THM formation as well as optimizing the pH using a higher pH to form your chloromines and out in the distribution system um can also work. So, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to. How How do you raise your pH? Uh, a lot of plants use um in the city of St. Angelo currently feeds this chemical right now. It's sodium hydroxide. So, it's just a chemical. You just change the blend of what we do. Mhm. Okay. And I guess the next thing is this is the first time that we've been out of compliance, I believe. So, okay. Yes. Could this have anything to do with the fact that uh we changed from we went to chlorine for what about a six week period and did that possibly generate a side effect? As far as this know the sampling event was before the switch over to free chlorine. Okay. So that was second quarter or it's a quart it's a four quarter running average. So based upon the four quarters this sampling event was in August or prior to probably the week prior to switching over to the free chlorine. Okay. And that could have been caused by the shallowess of the water. That that that kind of leads to why all of a sudden? I mean, we've been using ivy and concho and all that stuff for a few years. Why all of a sudden has this popped up? And I I I don't have a 100% answer for that. One thing could be is the source water quality may be getting a little bit worse. We you have

[2:13:27] been in a drought. the broomemide concentrations if you track over time are probably increasing um because the evaporation rate isn't being replenished by the water flowing into those reservoirs. Uh the natural organic matter may be getting more reactive as well because of of those. I I can't say 100% for sure that that is the root cause, but I know other utilities in West Texas are facing similar problems and I don't believe they had issues prior either. So, you know, my best guess is it's a the source water quality is slightly going downhill. Um, but you know, that that's that's my but changing the pH is a relatively simple process. Just a a chemistry mixing blend at the treatment plant. Correct. I mean, it's not a not a major as far as that. It it is if you have the equipment, if you have the chemical feed facilities, those are the things which we're looking at with Corolla to incorporate with the new treatment plant. We do have some facilities right now, but we really don't have the the good mixing facilities that you need to get it dispersed well in the water at the proper location within the right now. We're adding some on a very limited basis. We just don't have the facilities to add the amounts that are really needed to bring it to the level that Greg is recommending. Could can you bump that a little bit to that? That's exactly what we're doing right now. Whatever you can. We're doing everything we can right now to try to bring the pH up to see if we can limit that that formation. Yes. And that's part of what is included in the public notice going out. It says we're making changes in our chemical feeds and chemical additions and in mixing. That's what we're referring to right there is we're trying with everything we have in our current facilities to do those things to reduce that formation potential. Mr. farmer. Could the quality of the water be caused by the bottom of the bucket? There's more sediment, more uh micro chemicals, you know, the the little fishies swimming around in the water. Could that be the reason that the quality of the water goes down? Is the

[2:15:29] level of the water? Not little fishies. That's what it looks like to me. It's a reasonable hypothesis. It very well could be. I I wish I was a limnologist and I could give you a definite answer on that. But um you know the the the fact that the compliance issues haven't struck until just recently it it points it in that direction for me um to say that that could be the cause. We we started a chlorination process to clean out the nitrates and our pipes so that our water uh disinfectant was dying off too fast. And so out by Matthysse Field, we had to purge the water and we're low on water. We don't want to purge our water more than we have to. So we started a chlorination process to get rid of the nitrates and now we're going back to chloromine. Did that help our situation in the long run? Are we better now that we have I guess cleaned out the pipes a little bit using chlorine, clean out the nitrates? Are we worse off, better off or no difference? Or no difference? Well, a lot of utilities do and TCQ I think recommends this um that you do the prescribed free chlorination period and so it it helps with those problem spots in the distribution system. Um some utilities have to do those free chlorination they do it annually. Some utilities have yet to do one. So it's very again everything's very water specific and sight specific and water age specific. Um I don't have a whole lot of information on maybe you can share uh some of some of the things that's directly that for your city right on what that's been done. I I don't know everything that's been done there. As far as to address specifically since we've done the the switch back from straight chlorine to now back to the chloromines. Uh we're still in that switch over stage. We're probably about a week or two before it really gets stabilized all through the system. But as you as you've alluded, we are seeing a definite reduction in the amount of chloromines we're having to add to the water to maintain that residual out in the system. So the the free chlorination

[2:17:33] of the system to remove the nitrate buildup and that within the pipes definitely did have a positive effect on operation of the system because we're now be able to to feed lower rates. And as as Greg was saying, a lot of factors will affect these THMs. One of them is what's in the water. The other is as we're going through the summer, the hotter temperatures under the drought conditions, we were encouraged no movement of water through the system. We had a lot less movement of water in the system this past summer. So the water age was now becoming longer and longer in the system, allowing more and more of these to be forming over time out there. The other is with the nitrification going on the system, we were having to feed higher and higher levels of chlorine. So with those higher levels, we had a lot more potential to form the THM. So in essence, the perfect storm was happening this past summer with the poor water quality, the reduc the increased age of water in the system and the increased chlorom chloromine demands right there all happening at the same time. Combine that when they did pull those samples in August that we did now exceed those levels there. So prior to that before we experienced these extraordinary conditions this past year, we have always been able to maintain that because water had been moving through the system of a better quality there. So, a lessons learned. I mean, this whole and and I and I hope this is all part of the same thing, but the the shift to chlorine, you're going to do that on a regular basis. Now, the plan right now is on an annual basis, generally in the beginning of the summer months, June, July, when there's a lot of water moving through the system, it can be done a lot faster than when we had to do it this year. Yes. Okay. And so theory is that and I think that was the question Paul was asking in theory is would that possibly help with this too or not at all? I I think the the free chlorination period is for another issue. Um but so you don't think it'll have any impact whatsoever on this? It it it could in the end it well it can because in the instance of one of the factors that

[2:19:36] influence THM formation is it it it reduces the amount of chloromine that's demanded by the system. So you can feed less at the water plant and so it can uh limit THM formation in that respect that you don't have to leave the plant at such a high concentration of chloromines. But so that's that's the uh that's the main benefit that I'm starting to see it. But we can leave the water in the system longer. So the water age goes up because we're able to leave in the system longer with less nitrates. So that that counters it. So it's just a Right. There's a lot of variables in the in the equation. Yeah. I can see how I it's unknown. Okay. Okay. Okay. Do your best. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going leave that to the chemist now. Okay. All right. Well, sir, I think what we do now is bring up Mr. uh Wilson and let him talk to us about public communication regarding water issues. Good morning. I'm uh Anthony Wilson, the uh public information officer. And we thought that when you receive your monthly water update from Mr. Wy, you might also like to know what we're doing in order to communicate about this particular issue with uh with our citizenry. And so, you may recall that on September the 28th, I sent you a memo updating to that point what we've done as far as communicating with water issues. And I'm just going to breeze through this PowerPoint really quickly to tell you what we've been doing since then. And here you see what we've been doing uh in a I guess you could say a partnership with the Standard Times because a lot of this is information that we've been contributing. The thing I really want to spotlight is the uh daily water graphic and you may have noticed on page 3A each day this water graphic that the standard times has been running and we've gotten a lot of good comments about this as has the um the standard times. Each day we rep, this graphic reports what the lake levels are, what the water consumption is year-over-year

[2:21:39] for that particular date, what the drought level is, and what the restrictions are for that drought level, and then a conservation tip. So, we think this has been a really effective way of keeping water top of mind for the readers of the Standard Times. One thing I did fail to put on this uh list that I should have is Councilman Alexander wrote a uh pretty lengthy piece for the uh for the Standard Times detailing how the drought has sort of changed our our mindset and our our approach toward uh water. So, I think that was a useful bit of information for for people as well. With our local uh TV stations, KLST and KAN, uh we've had various coverage of of water issues. And one of the things I wanted to point out is that they do run some water conservation uh public service announcements on their website, concho valleyhomepage.com, and those were produced uh by our office public information. So, we appreciate that. As far as uh channel 17, you saw the uh the the PSA that we did with the uh the Aqua Squad earlier this morning. The latest thing that we have uh added to channel 17 are some really interesting and informative spots about 3 to four minutes long with uh John Begno as you all know who is a a master horiculturist uh in our community talking about water conservation. one one that was um that he did for us here recently was about how to effectively water your trees during the wintertime. And so we're going to be doing spots with him all throughout the year. And he's been really great uh to work with. Of course, John is not only uh very informative, but he's also very interesting to listen to. So he's a he's a perfect spokesman for those sort of issues. As far as our social media, everything that we do, we post on our Facebook and Twitter pages for uh the city. And I want to call attention to this next photo that was uh taken by our multidia coordinator, uh Brian Groves. This is a a before and after shot of a spot on Lake Nazworthy, the of course before the big rain and then and then after the big rain. And what's

[2:23:42] interesting about this is it generated an unprecedented 10,378 likes. I mean, that's that's unreal for us. 316 comments and 275 shares. and it's boosted our following to nearly 7,000. And that's important, too, because then we're able to get information about all the other different issues that we want to communicate uh with people out there about that. So, that was just something that went viral that we really didn't foresee, but it really obviously struck a nerve with people. It tells a story like a picture worth a thousand words from what I've been told. Uh water communications, other things that we've done. Of course, much of what we post is also on the uh city's website, St. Angelo texas. And obviously we invite our citizenry and the viewership of this meeting to to to plug into that. We've been doing some uh some radio interviews uh as well. And then we also uh assisted a a Texas Tribune reporter on a drought story that ended up running in the New York Times. I know several of you read that and I thought it was a really uh interesting and informative story. And then the Aqua Squad mentioned this earlier. The city is co-sponsoring a free rainwater harvesting workshop this Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at the Fort Koncho commissary. As of last night, we had 80 RSVPs to date. So, I think that's really excellent for a for a free workshop and and we just done sort of gorilla marketing of this uh at no additional cost. So, with that, uh, I'll be happy to entertain, uh, any questions that you have. And, and I hope it goes without saying that if you have ideas about issues, information that we ought to be communicating about water or anything else and ideas about the best avenues for communicating those, we're obviously open to to your input. Anthony, I just uh emailed you a while ago on this and maybe I shouldn't even have said that, but anyway, you asked for uh comments on how to distribute and I I I didn't see them on there or him on there, but the Konexon span and Gregorio Gutierrez, I'd like to see those graphs if they're not on his paper already on

[2:25:46] the partnership you're doing with Kale Standard Times. Maybe you can tap into his market also. I mean, it serves a large po uh population out there that hey, we need to educate the entire city if we can. And that's a that's a very good point. And uh and you're right, I should have included uh uh Kexion Hispa. Unfortunately, I don't read Spanish, but we can provide him the same information. Exactly. And we always do with press releases and such uh that we do all the other media. It's English. It is. It's bilingual. It's English Spanish. Okay, good. Thank you. Uh and so um I send you his number, his work number, cell number, and all and I've got all that. So, so, so the information that we send to the standard times, we'll send to him as well, and hopefully he can as far as the water graphic. Okay. Other questions or comments for me? I I have one. How are we going to communicate this um water out of range level? How how are we going to put in the people our customers bills? Is there There is a statement in all of the billing that's going out uh this month. And um uh you know I'll get with Mr. Wy and we'll decide maybe a good way to to communicate this just to just so that everyone's aware of the situation. You're going to be a part of that. Certainly. You will be part Okay. Okay. Okay sir. Thank you very much. Item number 17 is the first public hearing in consideration of introducing an ordinance authorizing abandonment abandonment of a public ride ofway uh in Miller JA subdivision. We have a presentation by our planning manager AJ F. Good morning everyone. We'll be very brief on this item. It's very straightforward. This is a request for an alley abandonment uh for which two notifications were required to be sent out. We received zero either in favor or in opposition of the request. The alley segment in question is just north of Avenue A uh between the intersections of Irving Street and

[2:27:50] Chadburn Street. To help orient you to the um east here, there is a a Shannon building and then the municipal pool is behind that. Uh immediately across the street from this area is the um satellite facility for the police department and the subject property or just next to the subject property is a vacant restaurant um that is very close to the river. The river is actually just one block north of this area. The original request was to do an abandonment of both of these alleys, this L-shaped segment. There were some practical difficulties with that. The applicant then amended their request and we reviewed that with everyone internally. um that would have been involved in the the process. There's just a couple of photographs here. This is looking uh east down Avenue A. The subject alley is here to the left. Here's the vacant restaurant facility I mentioned earlier. And then this is looking straight through that alley segment. The only conditions which staff recommends for the approval of the alley is to uh retain an alley easement, I'm sorry, an easement for water and sewer services, which you can see here in the slide. So that's really the only concern that we have. Um the applicant has indicated that they are fine with that condition and we have a representative for them if you'd like to hear that. Otherwise, we recommend approval and the planning commission also unanimously recommended approval of that item with that one condition I mentioned earlier. I'd like to make a recommendation to approve. I have a question. Have a motion to approve from Mr. Adams, a second from Mr. Hzfeld, question from Mr. Adams. By the city retaining that uh that easement, is it going to cost us anything? No sir. No sir. What we'll simply do is when we do the quick claim deed, which is the final document for this to be finalized, we will uh include the language to retain that easement so that we can access those mains at any time if necessary for maintenance and etc. Is the proponent going to uh maintain that easement? They have not indicated any opposition to keeping that easement in place. Okay, Mr. Silvas, I I never knew that was an alley. you know, doesn't really look

[2:29:53] like one, but but it's I thought it was part of the parking lot of They do use that for access. So, what is the idea to They're actually um and correct me if I say this incorrectly, but they're actually looking at doing a a replat to tie together some of the lots and the abandonment of this alley segment would allow them to adjoin both the lot where the building sits and the parking lot that's utilized for that business. Did I say that correctly? Okay. Okay, no problem. Is there any public input on this item? I have a motion and a second to approve this as presented with the conditions related. Uh let me call for that vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay, let's move on to item number 18. This is consideration of matters related to the text dot and federal highway administration transportation enhancement grant program. And uh there are parts A and B. Are you going to handle them together or one at a time? What do you think? We can handle them one one at a time or together. I think Okay. So, A and B and he'll cover them. And this is community and econom economic development director. I know he he didn't even know he was in charge of that. Director Sean Lewis. It's the longest title in the city, I believe. Unfortunately. Um I want to brief you first of all just on the project itself and and why we're doing this. Obviously because um we are trying to be the most livable city um in the state and try to follow plans like the comprehensive plan, the bike ped plan, the streetscape master plan. Um we are trying to look for alternative funding sources to do those things. So as you know um it's not every year but at least every other year, every three or four years, Tex releases a call for projects for the transportation enhancement uh grant program. This is something that St. Angelo has used extensively in the past. Um all the streetscaping that you see around the PO and Oldtown and the warehouses um by the depot that was all funded by transportation enhancement grants. Um the Red Aoya Trail project which is about to be under construction.

[2:31:56] The visitor center was constructed with TE money and the historic restoration of our historic depot is also um transportation enhancement funds. So this year the call due November 16th will allow for the state to divide up about 35 thou 35 million rather which is not a lot of money when you consider most of it will go to the big cities but as you can see there are a number of things that these funds can go towards most of which this year are focusing on bicycle and pedestrian connectivity and pedestrian and bicycle access to the community. So, uh, the first need that we're wanting to identify and just remind you of is the bicycle development. In 2005, as you know, we approved a bicycle pedestrian plan, um, which was the San Angelo road lizards, the bicycle association. A lot of groups were very involved with this plan. It's a great plan, um, which is essentially shovel ready, if you will. It's the plan is there. It's ready to go. And Texot requires that any project that we submit be in compliance with an existing plan. and they made that really short turnaround because they know cities won't have time to get those things put together. Um so they really want these shovel ready projects. The plan does remain largely unfunded. About the only thing we've done is the um Red Auroya project which will start next year and um obviously funded by Texot there too and then as you know stimulus funds um funded the restoration of the Lonewolf pedestrian bridge and uh but as you know St. Angelo ISD campuses, ASU, Goodfellow, downtown, North Angelo areas all remain largely unconnected with regard to a bicycle infrastructure. The second need is pedestrian development. In 2011, the TEI board um put together with downtown St. Angelo a streetscape master plan and um that also remains large largely unfunded. As you know, TEI has paid for the project between 18th and 20th on Chadburn. Um and then we've also gotten had the good fortune of getting a couple of new freedom grants that just pay for the curb ramps and um some side minor sidewalk improvements. And so those projects will be getting underway soon. But for the most part um

[2:33:58] we simply don't have available resources to fund these somewhat expensive pedestrian improvements. So what we feel like would be a good project for us to consider with the transportation enhancement grant is first of all adding 60 miles of bike lanes to the St. Angelo roadways. And that would have to be the roadways that are wide enough to accommodate. But our bicycle pedestrian plan took that into consideration. And then Clinton Bailey has looked at the ones in the plan. We've made some minor adjustments. And then we've also um made minor adjustments to that plan to connect the schools because not all of our elementary schools or junior highs were connected via bike lanes in the plan. So we've rerouted a couple of those to get you there. Um, so we're actually taking 11 of SISD's about 24 campuses and we're connecting them with a bike lane in the plan that I'll show you in the next slide. Also, um, Angelo State to the Red Aoya project, which is another bicycle connection that doesn't currently exist. And then Goodfellow to ASU as well as to downtown and then all the sites to the north as well. So major traffic generators like the Coliseum, um, the Spur Arena, the Walmart, um, and some of the new developments up there. Um, this plan will also connect to or get us pretty close. So, this is a plan. I know it's um not too easy to read on this, but um I would point out a couple of things. First of all, this is Martin Luther King. This is Chadburn. Um the bike lane, the bike ped plan called for these bike lanes where they are. And again, we just we just rerouted them up to, for instance, Reagan Elementary over to Fort Koncho Elementary. So, we made some minor adjustments to get us to schools, but for the most part, this is the plan called for back in 2005. So, as you can see, all of the campus facilities of Angelo State get connected and this would take you and connect you into the Redoya Trails project, which of course will connect Sherwood Way all the way back to Nickerbacher. And then, as you can see, we also are getting you to the front gate of Goodfellow Air Force Base, connecting you to Glennmore Elementary and then the red uh sports complex and all throughout downtown, Santa Fe Golf Course, Central High School, etc. So, that's the first thing, and we'll talk about the red and the pink in just a moment. Um, any questions

[2:36:02] on the bicycle lanes? Moving on to the pedestrian development needs. Again, while sidewalk construction really would do probably more for us in terms of pedestrian connectivity, this grant doesn't like paying for just sidewalks. It's really intended for enhancements, meaning trees, lighting, pedestrian amenities like benches, trash cans, etc. Unfortunately, if we included lighting in this project, it would um that's actually adding about four times the cost to the project. So, since we've got some street lights in most of these areas, we're not proposing lighting. It's simply too expensive to come up with the local match for. But, we do think that this project would jumpstart um North Angelo and downtown streetscape projects again, which are already on the books. They're in documented plans that we have. Um, and we believe that that trees, benches, trash receptacles will make a really visible difference and really enhance what we're trying to do and make those projects much cheaper when we go in and start reconstructing sidewalks and putting in the lighting, etc. So, as you can see there, um the areas that we're calling for North Chadurn from 29th to Houston, MLK, um for this minor streetscaping, if you will, from 29th to Houston, um as well as a sidewalk on on the west side of MLK because it's one of the least pedestrian friendly areas in the city along MLK. We've got two bus routes that go through there. also the central business district in downtown and also hightraic areas south of the river such as the fort visitor center art museum elo that's where we would be putting the the trees andor a combination of benches and trash receptacles and so this again the the red area here that these are the areas where we're calling for um the trees an average of about four per block um block face I should say and then also the the pink or the darker areas where you get a combination of trash cans and the trees um which is primarily in the central business district almost entirely. So, so the funding scenario, which I know is um something that is a challenge for you all um as you grapple with this,

[2:38:05] what we're proposing, first of all, you can pay for this over five years. We don't have to start the project like we did with the Retoya. You can acrue funds over five years that you then get your match to spend towards this grant. So, our match would be somewhere in the range of 240 uh 230 to $240,000. So, what we're proposing is number one, first a commitment from downtown St. Angelo at their board meeting week before last or last week um of 25,000 that they're committing right off the bat. um that will then go into the south tiers um and then can be allocated to this project. And then again from then on the north and the south tiers allocating $25,000 a year um plus and Michael won't like this but because some of these areas are outside the tiers the bike lanes um we're calling for $10,000 a year to be allocated for $30,000 to pay for the striping to pay for the signage um outside of either the north or the south tiers. So that already gets us if we could do that for the next just four years even though we have five years that would get us to about the the uh cost of the match and we downtown St. Angelo has expressed interest in future funding as well. This is just what they can do this year. And then the uh health foundation is another very viable option particularly because of the bicycle lanes and the the uh connection to healthy living um that that we think that this would help to promote. So with that I'll close with just the support for the plan. As I mentioned, the downtown St. Angelo support. We've got had two folks from WTOS that were here to speak. Um, one of those had to leave uh for a lunch meeting. Um, but they did approve this concept plan on October 1st at a subcommittee meeting for the MLK uh group. The TEI board has approved funding in the project concept on September 19th. That was actually for the the grant writing component of this, which in your agenda packet and on the agenda I believe is 17,000. Goodman Corporation has come down to 10,000. So you don't we don't now that price is $10,000 because we're taking on more of the work at the staff level. Um and so

[2:40:09] we would ask you to approve both that and the grant fund uh application. And then we also have uh this is on the no board. The NO staff supports it. We're meeting with TexOT later this week for the areas that cross Texot rideway with those bus lanes. And then we have gotten commitments from about half of the organizations listed on this. Um, as far as anticipated letters of support, obviously SISD very excited. Downtown St. Angelo, WTO, Angelo State actually asked us to extend that bike lane down to ASU. We didn't have that in the original plan, but we thought was a great idea. Wish we' have thought of it and it connects us to the Rawya Trails project. So, I'll be glad to answer any questions. Goodman has also done some work and hasn't charged us for it, haven't they? Yes, that's correct. I'd like to make a motion to to approve as presented. I'll second that. Okay. This is item A and B. Um item A is uh a recommendation to approve the expenditure. Okay. And B is the adopting a resolution authorizing the filing of the applications with text dot. So your motion is to to do both, right? A and B. Okay. Thank you. That's all I needed. Okay. I have a motion to accept as presented items A 18A and B and and a second from Mr. Hzfield. Further questions or comments? Question. Okay. Sean, uh you mentioned the Goodman Corporation when we did the Red Royal grant applic who who did that? I believe that was uh city staff that compiled that one. Rick is or so so why do and I appreciate that they I didn't know they had done free work for us but but why do we need Goodman to apply for this? Well, it's a good question. First of all, we've have found out that Midland is almost submitting the same grant um as we are. This is much more competitive process, much smaller pot of money. Goodman Corporation has submitted successfully um a 100% success rate um with submissions on the transportation enhancement grant. Um we have used them in the past. They have a very

[2:42:12] complicated analysis that allows you to calculate how many cars this could potentially get off the road. Um which text dot requires that kind of analysis. They they do carbon emissions estimates on how if you take this many cars off the road. They do an analysis of the text dot roadways and city roadways on taking cars off the road by putting bicycle and pedestrian ways. Um that that would is a cost-saving analysis that all of which we don't think our competition will be able to put together. Um particularly not in the time frame that they the very short time frame that they're putting out this year. So the 175 are now 10,000 is now 10,000. Right. they are submitting or filing for us for this 1.1 million. Is that right? Correct. Okay. It's between 1.1 and 1.2 uh million. Yes, sir. And um the the other thing that uh they also bring to the table is they have an existing contract with um the Contra Valley Transit District. So, we actually are going to pay the transit district who will then pay Goodman. Well, the transit district can count our $10,000 as local funds coming into the program and they leverage that. They essentially double their money when we give them money even though they're directly paying it out for um the grant. That's kind of just a side side benefit. We pay all of our Goodman costs through the Contra Valley Transit District of the COG. And I'm amazed how and and thank for you guys thankful that you guys submit for all these grants, but it almost seems like we are putting the card before the horse like man that money's there waiting for us like it's a done deal. So if this doesn't happen, we're out $10,000. Correct. But you feel we have a good chance that I do. Again, just with the success rate alone that Goodman has experienced, uh, in addition to the time um, that it would take, I can't imagine that most communities aren't using consultants this year because Tex very intentionally gave a very, very narrow window that you can submit this grant.

[2:44:15] Far narrower than any of the other transportation enhancement grant calls for projects that we've seen in the past. So you would have to be a very large city to have the staff on hand to do all of this analysis in the you know about two-month period they're giving us to do the project. So even this 10,000 the school district hadn't showed interest in you know contributing or ASU contributing nothing nothing. No sir we haven't asked for that but the tiers is splitting at 5050 with 5,000 coming from the north and 5,000 from the south and they actually approved again the 17,000 but we've got it down to 10 10. That's all I have. Miss Farmer Sean, I have a question. Uh, and I'm all for it. I support it and but I back to the grant, you know, to keep up with and stuff like that. I'm going to mention that. But it says proposed improvements under the grant are outlined. 22 blocks, both sides of the street, central business district would contain four to five street trees per block. Block face, right? Yes, ma'am. Two trash receptacles and two pedestrian benches per block. Yes, ma'am. My question is this. Who's going to maintain emptying the trash recepticles, cleaning up? I I just have visions even of our current transit center that the weeds are excessively tall and trash. Who Who's maintaining who's going to maintain this? Excellent question. Uh what we have in downtown St. Angelo negotiated this with Trashaway for the trash cans that they've already put 30 downtown. Um they have committed to Trashaway has committed to emptying those 30 trash cans in the central business district which is why we're not proposing trash cans in other areas. We would love to but right now the only commitment we have um for emptying those trash cans is for the central business district. So that's going to be the trash can maintenance. The bench is obviously very maintenance-free. And then in terms of the trees, those are only located in the TI zone uh tiers district. And so, um, you know, once a year if necessary, the tears can pay to have those trees

[2:46:17] trimmed or anything like that. Well, I disagree that it's maintenance-free at the benches, and I approve of the benches. I've been to cities that have them, and they're gorgeous, but people sit there, they drink their sodas, they have their sandwich, and if the trash recepticle is not close, they throw it on the ground, and it's it's a mess. And you know, if we're not planning some sort of maintenance or upkeep from the city itself, it's a waste of money. Well, we would propose if I can comment on that because, you know, I am in the central business district and you put one of those trash cans in front of my place, I'll take the bags out and I'll throw them away. I mean, that's what it means to me as a owner and a vendor in that area. And you know, we keep our sidewalks clean and we edge it and we do all that kind of stuff. And my sidewalk's not pretty, but it's there. And you know, that to me, I think is, you know, you're going to find that if it's in the central business, you're going to have people in the downtown that are going to do their part to help maintain it. I'm just speaking as one of those. So, and let's hope all of them are like you. I would hope that there are plenty of them out there, but I think Brenda's, you know, helps encourage people to do the right thing. And that's simply doing the right thing for my neighborhood that I work in. Sorry. Or move it. Yeah. Okay. Anything else up here? Okay. I have a motion and a second. Do I have any public input before I call for the vote? Brenda Gunter, downtown St. Angelo, Inc. And I just want to say that the $25,000 that we're committing to has already been committed to us from a grant that we applied for and have received, but can't announce it till January. So, that $25,000 is in place. Thank you. Okay. I have a motion and a second to approve as presented items 18 A and

[2:48:19] B. Call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Item number 19. This is the first public hearing in consideration of introducing an ordinance re-establishing the nighttime curfew hours for minors and any related matters. It's on here somewhere. Presentation is by our police chief Tim Vasquez. I don't know which one it is. Huh? Yeah. I don't know where it is. I can start without it. We sent the PowerPoint. We're having trouble finding it, but uh you should have the information. So, I'll just go ahead and start if you don't mind. Want me to wait? She didn't have it. So, y'all have the information in front of you. Okay. Uh we started the curfew back in 1996. Uh we had uh a nighttime and a daytime curfew. This is uh basically it was part of the ordinance. We're required to come every 3 years uh in front of the uh council kind of give you an update of what's going on. Uh the purpose of it was obviously because we were having an increase in juvenile gangs and crime that was occurring. uh the um the hours that we can have now. Uh I think it was uh last three years ago, maybe six years ago when we did away with the daytime curfew. So we've only had the nighttime curfew for the for so long. Um it shall be unlawful for any minor to knowingly remain, walk, run, stand, drive, or ride about in or upon any public place in the city during prohibited hours. A minor is any person under the age of 17. And the prohibited hours are 11:00 p.m. to 6 Sorry. Go ahead. I just want to make sure I really understand. Under the age of 17. Under the age of 17. Yeah. Uh the state of Texas recognizes a person to become an adult at the age of 17.

[2:50:24] Yeah, you're good to go. How old is yours? The uh the prohibited hours are 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 12:01 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. And obviously there are some defenses uh that come along with the ordinance and that would I I'll go through those. If the uh minor is accompanied by parent or guardian on an errand at the direction of the parent or guardian without detour on the stop or or stop involved in interstate travel engaged in travel to or from uh employment without detour stop involved in an emergency or outside their residence. attending official school, religious or civic function and exercising first amendment rights or married or emancipated in accordance with Texas law. And uh some of the supporting data that we have uh since we don't have a PowerPoint, but you do have the information in front of you, um if you'll look at uh at some of the supporting data, uh some of the interesting things that that that pop up to me was the amount of juvenile crime that was occurring prior to uh the ordinance. And as you see the uh years come from 1995 to present, you can see a significant decrease. Uh what was um what's nice to point out, you know, we have when we have a driveby today in the city of St. Angela, it makes front page news. And in 1995, when I was on patrol, we had those regularly and they were usually a little blip somewhere because they were so common. Um, you can see that in 1995 we had uh 16. Uh, and in 2012, as of right now, we've had zero. So, we believe that uh that's just one of many. Uh, Chief, and you're talking about a driveby, a driveby shooting, gang related driveby shooting. Yeah. Uh, disordered conduct was 420 in 1995 and dropped to 85. Um, runaways 662 in 1995 to 362 in 2012. Uh, theft 447 to 102, burglaries 106 to 40, assaults on minors or juveniles uh 375

[2:52:30] dropped to 157. You can see that uh some of the information that we have as far as contacts during curfew hours. In 2000 uh we dealt with 1,181 uh juveniles. That's how many contacts we made, minors. Uh in 2012, we were we're at 514. And then um if you'll see uh also one of the things that we'd like to point out is you also see not only a decrease in the suspects uh in these particular crimes of juvenile, but you also see a decrease in juvenile victims, which is is very important and very uh when you look at citations. In 2000 we wrote 235 and as of now it's 2012. Um and you might ask why do we need this if this is the numbers are going down. That's why we believe in the numbers going down. Yeah. Okay. That's not it. Then just you can turn it off. I think we're good. You say this is reviewed every 3 years but the last time we revised it was in June of 2010. We've never been early. Are we being early for the three years? No. And we haven't revised it. We've we've just brought it forward and and renewed it and renewed it, but now we're renewing in two and a half years. So that's you're just bringing it forward. I was told that it needed it was it was due. Okay. I was just looking at the dates are correct. Uh Chief Vent as well brought it forward with the history. Perhaps that's in your background, but we're timely and it is. But she that's what you're correct. I mean, it says revised 2010, June 21st, 2010. I want to say that we were late the last time. Is that okay? No, you didn't want to say because I don't have a I don't have a reminder on my calendar when when I became chief, they didn't hand me a piece. Oh, by the way, every 3 years and you got to do this. It was just one of those things that I think somebody found and said, "Oops, hey, uh, isn't that kind of how it came about?" Yeah. So, we forgot. So, that's we went through that.

[2:54:33] That's why it looks a little shorter. We're right on time this time. Miss Bowling, is he okay? Yes. Is that correct? We're all good. Okay. For the record. Okay. Any questions? Uh motion to approve. Second. Thank you. I was louder. So, you're not doing anything different? No, we're not asking to do anything different. We just want to keep the renewal and extend it another three years and we'll come back with more data in three years. Okay. I have a motion in a second to approve this as presented. Do I have any further points from council? I just want to say that um on these issues, I bring it to the people on the Facebook page I have. It has over 12,000 people on it. I said, "Hey, what do you guys think?" And it was massively supportive. Uh there was a couple people that said no. But it's it's very much supported by the citizens of St. Angelo that responded. Okay. And u do I have any other public input on this item? Chief, when when parents come to visit you, do they have to go around cuz they can't go in through the the area that's that's crashed. Yeah, they got to go around. They have to go all the way around. It's still there. Still there. I'm just checking. We got some some plywood there. Is that during curfew hours or not? There, Mr. Silvas. Well, the parents can go anytime. Okay. Any here we go. All right. Do I have any public input on this item? Outstanding. Let me ask for that vote. Uh, all those in favor, please say I. I I any opposed? Okay, I think this will be as as as good as it's going to get for finding a place to break. And so I'm going to break now. Uh we'll come back with item number 20 in front of us and uh take us into executive session at this time. We will move now at 12:14 into executive session under the provision of government code title 5 open government ethics subtitle A open government chapter 551 open meetings subchapter D exceptions to the requirement that

[2:56:37] meetings be open section 551.072 uh to discuss uh property uh and item or section number 551.071 071 to consult with an attorney on a matter uh related to a governmental body and uh under item number 551.087 uh to possibly discuss economic development negotiations. Let me call the meeting to order and start us off with item number 20. It's 205. We're returning from executive session. We're going to start with item number 20. This is a public hearing and consideration of adopting an ordinance authorizing the issuance of general obligation refunding bonds, establishing procedures and delegating authority for the sale and delivery of the bonds and providing for the security and payment of said bonds. Providing an effective date and enacting other provisions relating to the subject. Presentation by assistant city manager chief financial officer Michael Bane. Thank you, mayor. Good afternoon, mayor and council. This is an action item following up on the concept we discussed at our last meeting about some refinancing, a little debt issue we've got out there uh that will save this is a debt issue which is uh the debt service is funded by the development corporation from halfcent sales tax revenues. Uh it's a debt issue, not a debt issue. I thought you said a debt. That's what I thought he said too. Am I correct? This this is when you're at the podium, it's a little like customer service. The customer is always right. And I'm sure you're right that you heard correctly. I heard 650 dead. That's what I heard. That's what I heard. Uh so here to walk us through. All right. It is good news. There are savings to be had. Here to walk us through the action item that we've got before us today is Vince Vo from Specialized Public

[2:58:39] Finance. I thought you're doing great. Thank you. Got to continue actually. Mayor, council members, good afternoon. For the record, my name is Vince V with Specialized Public Finance. As Mike has indicated, we did bring this issue up at the last council meeting. What we're looking at doing in this case is refinancing the series 2005 issue. The city did uh the interest rate on that is approximately 5%. There we go. Uh if we look up at the top left corner, you'll see the refunded bonds or the bonds that we're going to be refinancing. Series 2005 issue. The maturities are the 2017 through 2020 maturities at an interest rate of 5%. Uh we're looking at trying to refinance those at an interest rate of 1.48%. Total savings by doing this would be $431,000 to the city. Uh that's net savings to the city. Uh what we're considering this afternoon is the parameters ordinance. This will give the city manager and the director of finance the authority to execute the transaction once we meet these parameters or exceed them. Uh we anticipate being in the marketplace next week. Uh we've already had a conference call with standard and pores to confirm the rating for the city. We're looking to get that rating out tomorrow afternoon. Uh if you or the council have any questions about this issue, I'd be more than happy to try to answer them. The 430 I'm sorry I'm not seeing that really clearly, but the $431,000 is net of costs of getting the savings also or Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. The $431,000 is net savings to the city. Thank you. Above any and all costs. Okay. And we'll find we'll have uh the city rating you said to Did you say tomorrow afternoon? Tomorrow afternoon. Yes, sir. And the parameters uh would be a range of of what you two what we're thank you. What we're looking at on the parameters ordinance as are established right now, we're not going to be issuing

[3:00:41] more than $8 million in refunding bonds. Uh we're going to be issuing somewhat less than that. But if next week it becomes more advantageous to put some more bonds in this issue and we can achieve some savings by doing those, we want to include those to maximize our savings. So, the parameters will allow us to issue up to or less than $8 million in refunding bonds. Uh, we have to produce a present value savings of at least $4.75% or better on the transaction before we can execute that. Uh, and the interest rate on the refunding issue must be at or below 1.85%. So, those are the three parameters that we're dealing with. Okay, this is a public hearing also. Yes. Yes, sir. Okay. Is there anything specific that I need to do as it relates to that or is it just the fact that we're Okay. What I'm after here then is a motion that I'll make a motion to approve. I got Mr. Adams. I got I'll second. All right. I got Mr. Adams making a run at it. Mr. Adams, your motion is that we would um accept up to $8 million in refunding bonds with a 1.85% not to exceed not to exceed 1.8 1.85% interest rate. Correct. And the third element, it must have a present value savings of at least at least 4.75% or better. That is my motion. Excellent. That is your second, Mr. Silvas. Okay. Questions for the gentleman. Public comment on this item. I have a question. How will will council be notified of what what our our rating is? Will we get that? Get an email or something in our packet. Let let us know how we can do that. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You will if that's what you'd like. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Call for the

[3:02:45] vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Item number 21. This is the discussion and consideration of offering dental insurance to retirees and their dependents. It's a presentation by our human resources director, Lisa Marley. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Um, as you may recall back in the second meeting in September, it we were asked to go back and research whether or not retirey dental insurance was something that we were interested in taking on. Um and so we went back to our provider who is a Delta Dental Insurance Company. Council also requested that we look at what that impact would be uh by way of cost to both the city and to employees. Presently, we cover 860 active employees at an annual cost of a little over $157,000. Uh there's approximately 500 retirees who would be eligible to enroll if this is approved. Um, and as I told you back in September, we had talked to eight other cities in Texas, and six of those uh responded to our uh or six of the ones who did respond said that they do offer dental to their retirees, but um Witchaw Falls was the only city who provided any funding for the retirey cost. Uh Delta Dental Insurance did affirm that they were able to offer that to retirees. So we are here today with four slides that represent some of the options. The first one is our current premiums and then three scenarios uh that you are to consider. These were in your packet that was provided. So uh these are the premiums that are paid by

[3:04:48] both the employee and the city at present. These are monthly costs. If you take the city's monthly cost and multiply it times the 860 employees times 12 months, that's like how we came up with 157,000. In this example, um the entire cost of the uh dental insurance for retirees are absorbed by the retirees and these are what the premiums would reflect uh should you go with that option. If you'll notice the uh the actual total cost is uh increased by uh 18% over the current premiums for our employees. in and in in this particular option, there's no increased cost to the city. Um, in this example, the city would absorb the total increase. Retirees would pay the same identical premiums as our employees. And if you notice, the increase cost to the city becomes 1674 per month per person, which shows an overall increase of a little over $116,000. And the third scenario that I came up with was that the um employees and retirees absorb the entire total cost and the city absorbs the cost for covering extra lives. So uh the 1522 per month cost for the city stays the same. It's just that we would add the 500 employees or 500 retirees to the city's cost, which is an overall increase of 91,000, putting the total annual cost at 248,390. So, I'm here today to find out whether or not you want us to offer that insurance and if so, how uh you'd like for us to pay for that that coverage. And I would point out that we are um just about going into open enrollment time later this month. So if this is approved, we would hope to offer that

[3:06:51] January 1st of 2013. Mr. Mayor. Yes, ma'am. I appreciate you doing this for me, Lisa. I had asked for this to be brought forward to discuss and I was not aware that retirees had been dropped from the dental plan. U I don't think it's right. I personally don't. as a council member, I don't think it's right. Uh if the rest of us are willing to talk about it and see whether it's a, you know, city absorbing part of the cost or the retiree being able to pay the premium in the group rate, it is considerably cheaper for them by being in this group rate than being out on their own. I would like to see that considered today and and would like to hear other opinions and views. Well, I don't I I mean, I'm very comfortable bringing them into the system and letting them at least buy using the city's um you know, the city's body number so they help drive the cost down in that. So, that part I'm very comfortable with. Um, I'm I find myself trying to remember the ins and outs of healthc care retiree versus employee. And in other words, for me, I'm like, well, I wonder how we could be fairly consistent in the in this process. But um you know I start from a position of I'm very comfortable with them at least buying in insurance using these rates because it would be helpful and then and then I would go from there to I don't know exactly where I would be on a scale of we pay for it they pay for it but I would want to be somewhat consistent with what we're doing with employees and what we're doing with retirees and health care is kind of where my feelings are least I feel. Okay, let me go with Mr. Adams and then I'll go with Mr. Silvas

[3:08:55] and then we'll we'll keep going. Go ahead. I do feel that um we should offer that it should be offered for our retirees. Um I'm not sure how we should go about um funding. If we can get them in with the rest of the pool and save them money, I think that we should do that's definitely something we should look at. But I think I'm kind of with the mayor with as it relates to uh to cost um on behalf on the side on the part of the uh the retiree. Mr. Silva, I was just going to say, you know, seeing Russell Smith back there. I I as maybe I'm assuming that you have shared this information with them, they're okay with it or some scenario or not or I I sent the packet to the um retiree who distributes that to the retirey group. I have not heard any confideration back to me on it. And and I guess my question to Mr. Smith is any idea which way you guys or Let me let me pull him up. Mr. Smith, let me pull you up here after I let every council member kind of weigh in. Okay. And I and I will do that for sure. I'm just asking a question. Uh before they were dropped, what was our status? How did we do that before? Did we pay? You know, I have no idea. I'm sorry. I do not know. How long ago are we talking about? It was pre200, but I don't know. A long time. That's a long time. Yeah. Well, okay. Any other thoughts before I ask for public input? Okay, Mr. Smith, please. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and City Council. I'm Russell Smith. Uh, I believe after 18 months, we basically didn't have dental. At least that's my memory. I

[3:10:57] don't remember it uh us having it in the past. What I do think would might be helpful here is just to kind of go back over that just a few years ago, the retirees and the employees all paid exactly the same for healthcare. And in one year, in one meeting, and within a few months, the retirees dependent insurance coverage went up as much as 10 times more for the retirees than it did for the employees. In one year, you took away our cost of living raise the same year, and you took away our pharmacy the same year. And every one of those have hurt us. And I also think it's very important to remember that prior to 99, the city of St. Angelo paid its employees 40 to 50% below these cities you now benchmark yourselves against. The police were 46% below because I was a police chief and y'all were implementing this system that y'all tried to have. And I'm all for y'all having that. So the retirees have t taken upon themselves a great loss and they do not get raises and I would like to say Miss Farmer that I greatly appreciate you bringing this forward. Thank you. U so that's kind of where it's at. And uh we I would rather hope that they wouldn't have to pay anything. And I would not do them justice if I said anything different because I've seen these people get hurt dramatically. We've seen them drop the healthc care coverage because of this because they couldn't afford it. And um so that's kind of where we're at. And I'm not here today to get all like I was several years ago because y'all know I was plenty unhappy about this. But this is something that she brought to the forefront and I do appreciate it.

[3:12:59] And I came today because of this email that Miss Marley sent. And uh that's why I've been sitting back there since 8:30. So, uh, any option is a benefit for us, but I can tell you that you dramatically hurt retirees that made up to 50% less and their retirement is based on how much they make. So, they're making as an as an annuity now from TMRS, they're making that much less than all those other cities that made all those extra monies. today. And I will mention one thing I wanted to say this morning. I didn't. In three years, when I turned 65, my taxes, it looks like they're going to be one-third of my city retirement on my house. So, anything that y'all could do would help. And I know that anything that you can do to reduce the cost of this benefit on the retiree would be very helpful. So, because they don't have the money. Okay, thank you. Any question? Okay, thank you very much. All right, I have another question. I ran into doing figures here. Okay, the third option is city absorbs total increase and below it says 1360 covered at $16.74 for 12 months is $273,000. That sounds like the employees and retirees are covered together. The employees, are we deciding on employees as well or or is this only retirees? No, we're only deciding on retirees. So the increase really is 116,000. That is correct. That's what it says for an increase of 116,127. Where did I miss that? Well, I will say why I brought it forward. I I was not aware that we didn't offer dental insurance dental under the insurance to the retirees. There were a couple of retirees who brought it forward. There's there our packet didn't say that. I got you. We're on the We're on the pack. We're on

[3:15:01] the packet. You're on the I didn't I never looked over there. just did it in my head. I added it on the PowerPoint. I thought you might want to know the difference. Just glad to see the numbers the same as I said. And I don't recall in all of the Gazsby 45 meetings that I attended with the retirees and current employees, I don't recall it there ever showing a difference of the insurance premiums. We did show the difference of retirees and the uh post 65. the cost, the breakdown was in there, but never ever did I see anything that said dental excluded. I am very comfortable with making a motion today that we offer the dental insurance to the employees at no cost to the city because we're in the middle of the budget year and I'm not saying that I won't be opposed to next year retirees. Retirees, excuse me. Thank you. uh that we can't do some adjusting or looking at it, but to come in after the budget's been set, I I do get heartburn over an increase of this amount. Uh but that's where I'm sitting today and that would be my motion. Okay. I'll second that motion and then ask that during this upcoming budget that you guys look at how we're handling health care and dental and all that together. Uh so I would make them I would second your motion that we get them into our pool and then during and get started from there. I totally agree with that statement. Yes. And in the conversation part I would like to point out that for the rest of the council to be aware of Lisa is and Michael are looking at uh the COLA and how their increases work. that'll be presented at a different date so that we all have an understanding of how retirees do or do not get salary increases or cost of living. So, we are looking at it. It is being worked up and I hope that we have a presentation before the end of the year, but at this time the dental is separate and it's a start.

[3:17:06] Okay. Right now you have a motion and a second before you on uh bringing them into the pool and a and then behind that not in the motion but just a commitment to work on this through the budget process and and make sure that we're we try to be as consistent with dental insurance as we are with health insurance while we're dealing with both the the employees and the retirees. Which one of these four scenarios would that motion cover? The first one. One that is at no cost to the city. That that one is that the first one I've already zipped up the second one actually. No, that's it right there. Okay. Is it what you were saying earlier when you were when you made your comments, you made your your Well, so what I'm saying is I want us to get to a point where we do with them exactly what we're doing with health insurance. We don't have the health insurance information today and and as she's saying it's in the middle of a year. I want to say get them into the system. Let them start buying at a discount. But then between now and October while we go through this budget process, let's get them into the system the sim the same way we handle them with health care. Let's handle them that way with dental insurance. So if there's a slight difference between the cost to an employee and a retiree, there would be a slight cost difference between an employee and a retiree on dental. If it's exactly the same, it'd be exactly the same, but the ratio would be done the same way. And we wouldn't exclude them from the dental policy. And as Miss Marley said, you know, we're right now in the enrollment time and if everyone enrolls, it's very very possible that premiums could go down with the higher number of people in the pool. So, we need that time frame to adjust our budgets and to see what it's actually going to cost to the next premium date. Well, I mean, these are the actual costs that will occur January 1st based on the information that we gave to the provider. Now, what what we cannot determine at this point is what the what the changes will be for the year 2014. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. Question. Yes, sir. Russell, is there

[3:19:11] any way that a retiree is going to be able to spend an extra $17.96 a month or 41.98 for they and their spouse? I would say very few of us are going to be able to do that. That's what I I was just figuring it's about $500. So really what we're doing is just a feel-good thing here because it's not going to affect any a year. They can't afford it. A few of us might be able to but then there's you know most of them probably are not. It's exactly what I thought. I won't support it. It's not enough. It's it's just something that makes us feel good because we're doing something, but it has no value to the retirees. Very good. I think there is a value to include them and let them know that we are looking at something that we were not aware of and I want to make it a part, but we are in the middle of a budget year and to include a cost. I'm not saying that come this next budget time, which will be just in a few months that we start working on it, that we can't look at offering to pay a portion of it. I I want to treat them the same way on this. Yeah. I just want to be realistic though. When when the healthc care deal happened, I'm the one that heard many of the retirees and I heard them talking about they couldn't live as it was. They were having problems paying their taxes. they're getting food on the table because of their low amounts that they get from retirement. And so anyway, but this this is better than nothing. And and so I I I'm just telling you that a lot of the retirees know, especially in the water and in the sewer department, street and bridge, those people are going to have a tough time doing it unless they have something else. I don't know about of the two retirees that I have been corresponding with. Naturally, they both want it at no cost to them, but just the opportunity to be in a plan that the cost is so much cheaper. I'm

[3:21:13] very thankful for that. I did have two people tell me that they would rather have I don't think they thought it was going to be this high. They thought it was going to be about half that. But I did have two retirees tell me and David Hermes has been the one really representing us lately. But but I will be here whenever this comes up again as long as I know that it's going to come up. So I mean it's better than nothing is what I'm saying. If this fails, I'll make another motion that the city absorb the increase and give these people an opportunity to take advantage of this. I have a I have a question for Lisa Marley. you made a comment something about if if more people enlisted, you know, you've got your enrollment coming up, uh, that maybe premiums go down. How is that going to affect the current employees? How would that affect them? Well, I didn't say that they might go down. What I said was that if the if we add 500 people to our our program and depending on what the claims experience is for those 500 people, it may adjust our premiums upward. I I you know there's no way to predict that at this point. I don't know what the usage would be for those 500 people. And this is true insurance, not self insurance. True insurance. Correct. So premiums could go up. Absolutely. But it would the addition of people to your plan that use the plan heavily uh or cause big expenditures, then the insurance company's going to say, "Okay, we're not getting enough money from you to cover all of this." And so we're going to have to raise your rates overall. And that's what she's describing. If uh and so adding them to the plan if it causes an a big increase in expense could cause everyone's rates to go up for dental insurance. So then the current employees wouldn't have any say. So, I mean, they may they may not want to include the retirees. I'm just throwing that out there, you know. I'm just saying if it's going to adversely affect them, their female. That's correct. That's correct. They may not be

[3:23:16] happy. Yeah. And Russell, I'm just saying that, you know, I'm I'm playing the devil's advocate here. So, okay. What else up here? I'm going to call for the vote that we take the motion as presented. That is it right in front of you. and and doesn't preclude you from making further changes later and particularly as part of the upcoming budget process. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Those opposed? Nay. It's not enough. Okay. I got two naysay that I can hear. Mr. Silvis, I couldn't hear you. Did you? Are you an I? I'm an I. Okay. I have uh I by five and I have nay by Mr. Adams and by Mr. Morrison. Okay. Okay. Let's go to the next item which is item number 22. Discussion and consideration of issuing rebates of water fees and any action related there too and presentation by Morgan Trainer our budget manager. Good afternoon. Recall that uh we meet twice a year to res review the water fund fund balance um to November and April. November. Here we are. So, um, do you have something to add? I'm just getting ready to say go Morgan. Okay. So, during the months of April and November, um, we've used this discussion to initiate action twice. Uh, rebates were granted uh where base fees were waved for two months one time and, uh, we use an excess fund balance for capital projects uh, another time. So, uh, to get to the numbers, the estimated fund balance, the unodudited fund balance as of September 30th was 4.8 million. Uh, the 75day fund goal goal is to be at 4.9 million. So, you'll see that we're about $100,000 short of that goal. Um what's not on paper yet is um there are capital projects that will draw down this fund balance that were begun in 2012 and will be carried over to 2013 at our next city council meeting of about

[3:25:19] $800,000. So that would yield that the estimated fund balance will be only 4 million when it should be closer to five. So uh staff would recommend that there is no action taken at this time. Council question questions and comments. Mr. Morrison, I don't like the way this is split up. I mean, when people write their water bill each month, they write a total bill and they have no say so as to how this thing is arbitrarily divided and which pocket that is put in. And there's always seems to be enough money to well I can think of an expenditure a large expenditure that was made out of the water department just a couple of months a month ago. There's always money to make expenditures like that but when it comes to giving people back money as a rebate money that they have put in there's never enough money at that that fund is always short and the other fund is always high. And I don't understand it. And the people I'm talking to on the phone and they're emailing me with these silly water bills, they don't understand it. And now we have an opportunity to take some of this money and give them a little relief. And we we're short. And it's I know there's two pockets. I've been that's been explained to me a hundred times. I know that. But I don't understand it. It's not right. I find I find myself wanting not to take action on this today. Is there a way for us to table this until we get the information back on the rest of the rest of the gather the gathering of facts that is going on? Well, I I would be very interested in what the gathering of facts reveal. That's a very good idea. I do want to I don't have a problem with tableabling it to the first of meeting in December or whatever, but I do want to point out and make it very clear to the media or those watching. There have been two occasions where we have refunded excess back. It's not been an ever. There have been two occasions and we chose the manner in which to do

[3:27:23] it, whether it was off of their base rate or uh however it was done. that it would be hard for me to want to do a refund. And the reason is because I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, I I don't And the reason is because we still are not out of the woods on Exactly. water. And so I I like the idea of having money available in case we're having to spend money because I just remember a cool emergency environment winter and December when lots of us didn't have water period. And so I'm I'm hesitant. When you turn on your tap, you can't take a shower. I was there. It hit my home. But it does seem like it would be great for this to be related to what what are the outcomes on a couple of the other items there. So I'd like to move it to the first meeting in December and just get your information and then make a decision on this and some of those other things myself. I have a question, Mr. Alexander, and then Mr. Silvas. In light of these questions we have here, in light of water bills, they're out of range. There's a lot of people upset about a lot of water issues. In light of the water department purchasing uh furniture, there's a lot of things I can list here. I think bringing back up what Kendall and I kind of nodded, we agree on last year when he was sitting over here, uh we should be looking at a municipal utility district or a water co-op. We we brought it up. Kendall and I kind of thought it was a good idea. It's a way to not just have a San Angelo water department. It gets the politics out of it, but we can also start linking in area communities into this and get ourselves out of this. This is a political issue and it shouldn't be. Uh the people, they want this thing run by them by them themselves, their peers, uh that do this all the time. I think that I think we just have a situation here that the time is ripe to look at that and I'll be bringing that up at the very end as a future issue. Okay. uh somewhat complex, but I'm just

[3:29:26] saying this is one of those things that triggers that thought that we need to get out of this as a council and and put it into the hands of the stakeholders or stockholders of this uh is it okay with the group if we table this and look at it after we get make a motion that we take staff's recommendation no action at this time and look relook at it in December mayor in that in that light we are compelled by ordinance to look at this twice a year but we are not prevented from looking at it at any other time. Thank you. That's what Hope's trying to find out before we did something that made us wait till next April. Okay. Thanks. So, we can proceed as I will second your motion that we just take no action at this time and look at it again in December. Uh, let me call for that vote. I still have a question. Please, Mr. Sus and Mr. Orsfield after that. Thank you, Michael or Morgan or somebody. So the water rebate that we could issue would be any amount that's over the 75day go balance fund balance. Is that right? Actually we our fund balance is a goal at this point. Our policy sets a goal but it does not compel action for uh amounts in excess or below those goals. Some some of those policies say that council is required to do such and such with rates if the fund balance falls low. We have not written that into ours. We've simply simp simply specified goals. So the goal does not compel you or require you you or staff to act in any way. Um this ordinance simply requires a review and it is up to the judgment of council to determine what amount might be available for a rebate. Uh what we've done in the past uh Miss Farmer is correct there are two occasions in the past. One of those occasions what we did was we altered the base fees to zero for I think it was one or two months two months. And so when the bills went out they saw a base fee

[3:31:29] of zero and then they saw usage fees on there. Uh the other time we were at the end of a year there was a small excess in it uh beyond 90 days and we were that was at a time when we were struggling with money availability for capital and we transferred that money to a capital fund to be used for capital projects. So she's right there two instances where we've actually uh taken some action on this beyond no action in the past. And so Mr. Silvis I'm I'm going the long way around. I I understand that is up to you the the consensus of council for what might be available and if we were in a situation where you were seriously contemplating some kind of action for us the easiest way to distribute a rebate is simply to change the fees for one month period rather than to calculate checks and mail those out and all that process. So what what we would likely do is bring to you uh a series of options which rate changes would uh uh what kind of dollars rate changes would yield. For example, if we w if we waved all the base fees for one month, that would cost you this amount of money and then we could calculate how many months we might wave those base fees or we would look at other options that you wanted. Well, let me let me just say that I I too am interested in in hearing more information because just last week I visited an elderly gentleman who's had a water bill of I I kid you not, it was $1,700 and where one month supposedly he used 96,000 gallons, the next month 72,000. So, there's some horror stories out there of something's going haywire out there. Whether it's meeting, we really need to connect those customers with our with our customer service folks. Yeah, I did. I did. And there's been a couple that have contacted me. But yeah, I too will feel more comfortable with more information because there's there's something just absolutely going wrong out there for a

[3:33:31] lot of their citizens. Mr. rehearsal. Um I I guess my take on this this fund balance is maybe slightly different that if we if we end up getting to the point where we want to offer rebates, I'm would be more inclined on a topic that we've talked about and that's uh incentivizing conservation and I would rather have instead of that issue to everybody. I personally would prefer to come up with a program and we use excess funds out of this to pay for give give rebates to people that replace high flow toilets with lowflow toilets or zero escaping or with rainwater collection or you know you name it there that there's that there's particular values that they could have that could that that create a lasting effect well beyond two months of a base fee of what 14 bucks depending on your meter. your side. I understand. But generally 14 bucks. So that's 30 dollars you're getting a relief on that that if you know if we could help people do that to me that's investing back in our infrastructure which is what the purpose of the the water fund is is to improve the infrastructure of our water system and that ties directly with it. Just my opinion. Okay. I second that. Miss a good one. That's a good one. opinion. Okay. On an opinion. Okay. Miss Farmer, uh there's some type of um program that we're exercising now that if a customer uses less than the average or so much less than their previous, they they get a dollar amount credit. Miss Farmer is dangerous today. Her memory is on. We do have some some kind of a a a low conservation credit program. we we could have the uh billing folks uh come remind us what the terms are associated with that. The other thing is when uh Mr. Hersshfeld talks

[3:35:35] about some kind of incentives uh you know those incentives something that moves us in the direction of what our long-term objectives for this activity would be would would could be a big help. Sometimes movement toward those objectives requires greasing the skids with some dollars. And uh if you determined that there were a certain amount number of dollars you wanted to make available for some kind of program, if that program helped move us in the direction that we had long-term goals for, that could be uh kind of a double double whammy. Possibly the budget folks can be working on the program for presentation at our workshops or budget workshops that clearly states the requirements for a customer to bring in proof of or an inspection of proof of like saying the lowflow toilets, the energy efficient water miser washing machines, the uh showerheads. if they can bring proof in of these things or if we have to inspect, then give us a dollar amount of how much that they can be refunded per month. Give us a program, a plan to go into next year's budget. Well, and the thing is we don't have to create that will. I mean, there's plenty of other municipalities that are doing this today. So, all we have to do is look at that and look at what Austin's doing. And maybe we can't go to the level the dollar value that they're offering, but at least something and how it affects us financially, right? Man, she's she's good today. She's on. Okay. I have a motion and a second and it's just related to putting this off, taking no action at this time, looking at it again in December. Um, may I call for that vote? All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. Item number 23. This is the discussion and possible action to set the reconsideration of the city of St. Angelo's participation in the National League of Cities Service Line Warranty Program and any action in connection there too. And this was requested by our uh Councilman Adams. I I do know I also

[3:37:39] got something in the I've been getting some stuff in the mail. I'm sure y'all have about some organization that's calling folks in town about this kind of thing. So, three different ones. Okay. Absolutely. Uh the reason I asked that this be brought back to u uh council for u further discussion uh and and not any action today but maybe at a later date uh is because I I felt that it would be it it's beneficial to our our citizens. Uh keeping in mind that this is a voluntary program. It's optional. Uh but it also has the ability to save our residents hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars over a period of time. Several cities in uh the country already taking advantage of the uh National League of Cities Service Line Warranty Program and they're realizing uh savings. Uh Midland, not Midland, Abalene uh hasn't been in the program I don't think a year yet. They've already saved their citizens about $200,000. When we look at um some of the calls that we get as they re re relate to uh service line problems, a lot of times residents will call out the city because their uh plumber will tell them that they have a they have a plumbing problem or something of that nature and they tell them, "Well, you know, it's on city property." But then the city will show up and tell them, "No, that's on your property and you've got to get it fixed." And some of these uh service calls can cost upwards and hundreds of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but hundreds or thousands of dollars. Um, which is a a real chunk out of someone's pocket if they're on a on a uh on a fixed income. As I said, this is not something um that's for everyone, but I do think that we should offer it for those citizens that would be interested in having it as opposed to just saying that we're we're not going to not going to support it. Most of the um um lower income families don't have the funds that it takes to pay for $8 or $900 uh plumbing job. Uh but if they can

[3:39:42] pay a few dollars a month uh and have this service provided available, then I think that they would they would there are many people out there that would take advantage of it. And there's sever several different ways that we can we can look at this. The mayor is also correct. There have been a couple of other companies that have been uh organizations that have been in contact. I know with myself and I'm assuming everyone else on council as it relates to this. So even if we don't uh decide to go with uh National League of Cities service line warranty program, we do need to look at what's best for our citizens and take that avenue. I'm not saying we should uh disregard anyone, but I do think that we owe it to our citizens to make this make this optional, make them make it available and uh give them an opportunity to uh to participate. How how are you foreseeing the process? I mean, is it something that is part of a water bill? Is it something that's a direct mailer? Is it something on channel 17 that says, you know, we want you to be aware that this is available or what? How are you seeing us moving forward if we were doing something like this? Well, the program will um educate our citizens as it relates to um lateral line responsibility. Uh they National League of Cities will contact the residents, let them know what's available. Uh if I'm I'm I'm not sure. I believe it would be a part of their their their water bill and a portion of that can either come back to the city or we can say we're going to use that to help lower the uh cost to those individuals that are going to that are going to participate. Okay. Okay. Other questions or thoughts on this? Yes. Uh there there's a company behind this. No matter what it is, who it is, there's somebody behind it making money and it's just uh a risk. This is insurance. They say, "Well, we're willing to risk this amount. we charge this amount. How come the city of St. Angelo can't do this? Or how come we can't as a city of St. Angelo uh negotiate a contract with somebody and and get these rates fixed much lower? Because I mean I did the calculation half a year a year ago and I remember

[3:41:45] it's it's outlandish. They're making a lot of money. And so I think and and remember y'all said I don't mind if they make money. Some of you are saying that. I'm saying hey I think as a city of St. Angelo we need to act on behalf of our citizens and negotiate a lower rate because I think we can. But y'all didn't buy into that. And so that's I still sit in the same seat right now. I mean, as far as my position, I I think that our staff should go negotiate with some some company out there, find the best rates, and then offer that. I I have looked into that, Councilman Alexander. Um rates be about $4.75,5 a month maybe. There are several companies out there that that are doing what the National League uh of city service line um organization is trying to do. Um if you remember when Brian was here and I would like for him to come back and give us some more information. A lot of the companies uh they are making money but they aren't paying out on as many claims. When you look at insurance and that's basically what it is insurance you look at automobile insurance, you look at life insurance. You may not ever have an accident, but it's good to know that you have the coverage just in case. And so when we look at negotiating negotiating u uh rates, I don't think we need to really negotiate them because it's optional. If if you want to pay $5 a month for it, you can. Oh, yeah. And I see that too. But we didn't we said we'll do nothing. We have no part of this. And I think that's the worst. I think that we at least give people the option. But I think they have the city of St. Angelo. I think we can do better for our citizens. That's just what I think. That's what I don't understand. I mean, isn't this an option that I could participate in if I so desired today, right now as we speak? It's just not endorsed by the city of St. Angelo. Remember that conversation? We don't want to endorse. The part that bothers me is that, you know, if if it's just us endorsing something, that's one thing, which I don't not sure I think the city should be endorsing one company. But if it's added to a water bill, I'm concerned about the collection liability that we would have. And now we would

[3:43:48] have to we have to collect our own bills. And now we have to collect on behalf of somebody else and then take that those proceeds and send it on to somebody else. And then what if it doesn't get, you know, we don't get it collected? Then anyway, I it it's available right now. I think there's nothing wrong with letting all these folks come out there and then we, you know, give them a link on our website to say, "Here's all of them that are offered. Here's a general description of of the services that are provided. Here's some of the things that we think from our research that you should be a little bit wary of. Be careful for this. Watch out for that." Um, and just give them the information and give them free choice to do what they want. That's my thought. I on the agenda for reconsideration of the uh proposal by this particular entity that supports um service line warranty. I think it's and and national league of cities and north central North Texas League of Cities. uh they have a private entity and they have a package and I think what's posted is whether or not council wishes to reconsider that that concept. That's what's on our what you're describing is that program what he's he's describing is making them aware of some programs you're saying we're kind of getting I know that mayor but I'm just talking about what our job today is. Well I understand so you feel like we're getting off base a little bit. That's what I'm asking. Okay. Well, but we have to consider all options. Well, we you can come back and what the item is posted to do is to provide a a rich opportunity to do that. I just wanted to say that it probably came across last time as we didn't endorse the program. And I don't think that's quite true. It's we were not going to endorse one company, right,

[3:45:52] over the other companies that were out there. You know, I personally have received from three different companies postcard. If interested, you know, fill it out, send it back post postage prepaid. But if the city wanted to put little packets in their customer service area where people can pick up and participate on their own, if they wanted to put the addresses and phone numbers on the website, this is fine. Just like Mr. Hzfield says, it that's a public person's choice to choose. You know, you can put them in the title companies when people close their home loans. Like if they buy a home warranty program, I chose to buy a home warranty program, they I could have also bought this packet. It could be put there. And it's the person's the public's choice. And for those who've been in their homes for years, if it in public service information, pick up the information. But as a city to collect the premiums, pay for it to keep up with and the money that's involved putting a staff person or one or two or more in handling the billing process and paying for for another business out there. I'm highly opposed to, but I'm not opposed to the program. Just make sure that the city says this is available to you. There's got to be a way that without without endorsing any one program or becoming an active participant on behalf of that program, there's got to be a way though that we're doing a better job of of uh presenting what's available and presenting what and so somewhere I'm I'm spurred I'm spurred by Councilman Adams uh petition here to do to do more to let people know what is out there, what they could be doing. And I and so I'm wanting to make sure we we gather information for them, get information to them. That's what I'm wanting to do without becoming an agent for this group or helping to collect money for them or whatever or without uh endorsing a specific one myself, but I would like to make sure that we don't just leave and be done. I think what he's spurring me to want to do is be sure that in what we

[3:47:54] do on channel 17, in what we do with um our water bill even that we make people aware that this is available and what it is and that we do do a more proactive job of education and choices and things of those natures. And I'm thinking if they can help us to be more proactive and it doesn't have to be this company, it can be another one. if they're going to give us the materials, if they're going to pay for the materials to send out to the residents in order to let them know. Uh I mean, I'm sure we all know we'll probably get more response if we send out something with everyone's water bill as opposed to if we just run it on channel 17. That's what I'm looking at. Um yeah, but uh I I see this as an opportunity for them to take ownership and or not just National League of Cities, but any company take ownership and what we're trying to do here. and and I would welcome anyone to say, "Well, look, we'll even give you information, give it information to send out so that we can educate." Um, but I just wanted to bring it back up um so that we could reconsider it. Maybe when we look at again, we can have Mr. Brian, the guy that talked to us last time and representatives from the other from the other companies as well. From the other groups as well. Are you trying to say something? Just saying if if if all if multiple companies could participate, I I would not mind under condition putting it on the bill. I I would if we're getting 10% back, we'll bill out. Not a problem if we're getting 10% and anybody can participate. One, two, three. You just have to meet certain contract. Now they're competing with each other and we're not a part of that, but they're competing. It drives down the price. Okay. Are there is there other input? I I know I need to accept u uh public input so he has a good chance to talk. Okay, come on up. Yes, my name is Jim Turner still. Uh and this is Your name is Turner Steel. I am still Jim Turner still. Uh this is important information for property owners, not just homeowners, that a lot of utility lines once they

[3:49:58] meet, get onto the property, pass the D mark, whatever, it's no longer that utilities responsibility. You find that right now, especially on things like home telephones, the telephone company hasn't been responsible for the lines inside your house for several years now. A lot of people don't realize that. And if they want to move a phone to another room, they don't call the phone company. They call a private contractor to do that. Sometimes a phone company will do that if they but they don't have to. It's no longer required. And so you're treating them as never contractor. Second thing is any discussion like this, we probably need to bring in other service or excuse me, insurance companies and representatives because sometimes this may actually be included in part of either an existing or a very lowcost incremental homeowners or business owners property insurance package that would cover that for less than the cost of an individual package. and you'd only have to deal with the one insurance guy. So, it'd be easier to take care of when it needed to be taken care of rather than having to have 15 different policies you're going through. The last thing is I fully support the city endorsing the concept of insurance there just as a protection method for property rights, property owners, property values, etc. But it should be done at minimal cost and no adjustment to any bills or so on. This should be something that we provide them good, reliable, truthful, honest information and then let the market really on its own set the rate and the participation and so on. If we try to get in there and game the market by changing the bills and so on, I think we're actually doing both the companies and the citizens a disservice

[3:52:02] because if they already have that included, for example, as part of their homeowners insurance, how do we take and figure that into the bill if they don't have a separate policy? as a good example. We're creating a nightmare for our billing department and our uh uh finance department trying to separate well this is this isn't and we're ending up favoring specific plans that may not necessarily be the best in all occasions. The market is much better at doing that, especially when you got one-on-one with insurance professionals, homeowners, business owners, and so on looking at things like that. We don't want to take and create additional turbulence that's unnecessary and additional confusion that's unproductive in that market. And this is a market that we are getting into and we need to realize that sometimes best of intentions always have unintended consequences. We need to get the information out. Need to be truthful, accurate, honest. After that, the city's obligation ends right there. Thank you. Okay, sir. One further comment if I could just just briefly. Um, we also need to I'm sorry, Mr. Adams, on after that, Mr. Morrison, please. We are I hear I hear a lot of us talking about homeowners insurance, but we all of us, the majority of us on this council have a vast number of constituents in our districts who are not homeowners, they're renters. And so, this would afford them that opportunity. Mr. Morrison, thank you. I think that the Better Business Bureau in St. Angelo is probably the one that is best capable to make these decisions. If a company is doing what they're supposed to and they're member of the BBB, then there is already an advocate for them. So, if there's a a dozen companies that send out won't send out advertisements, the Better Business Bureau would be the one to to go through and check not the city. That's not the city's job. It's not a responsibility. Okay. Uh, for the moment I it's a

[3:54:09] discussion item. I didn't hear any action taken, but I am looking to see if there's kind of a consensus that we're gathering enough information to be a an information broker. I know Mr. Morrison how you felt and and but isn't that seeming to be that seems to be what I'm hearing from everybody that we want to be an information broker on this at the least. Okay. Let me ask maybe that you guys help us get that done. Sure. Let's go to item number uh H. Um this is item 24. Uh followup and administrative issues. Item number 24. There is nothing uh for action today out of the executive committee session uh or the executive session. And um I don't I'll get to announcements and consideration of future agenda items in a second, but what about this uh consideration of date changes? Are there folks that want to look at uh November the 20th, December the 4th, December the 18th, and January the 1st? My my own input is I I have it on my calendar and I've planned around these uh so that the 20th, the 4th, and the 18th are fine for me. The first is not that attractive. If we meet on the first, it needs to be a real short. I'm bring Okay. Schools are important. What what's the school in the school? See the schools are in school on all of these days. Oh, okay. Mayor, as additional, but to to muddy the water further, we have two pending possible joint meetings. One with KOSA DC, uh the other with the Downtown Development Commission. Both of those groups are uh interested in having joint meetings with council to discuss their issues and uh so as you consider these future dates, we're also considering possible joint meeting dates with those groups. Okay. But um these you know, as Mr. Morrison says often, you know,

[3:56:13] people know what Tuesday it is and that kind of thing and these dates don't seem to be I mean it's December 4th and December 18th. It's not December 23rd or you know what I'm trying to say. It seems like it's going to be only one as problematic as the first. Yeah, the first doesn't look like that would work very well. So, do you want to move that back to the following week, the eth? Do you want to be on the eth? I would go eighth and 22nd because look at because then you it's every two weeks even in February. We have an extra week in that month. So, that would we have five Tuesdays. All right. We have a proposal of the 8th and the 22nd. Would you guys like to do the 8th and the 22nd in January? Talking about what do we do about December? Leaving it just where it is, the 4th and the 18th just like it's already scheduled. Okay. But January, we're saying since it's supposed to be on January 1st and January 15th, we're saying let's not meet on January 1st and bump that back a week. And then because we're bumping it back a week, go ahead and bump the second one back also. So you don't go the 8th and the 15th, you go the 8th and the 22nd. Works for me. And then in February, you're back on normal schedule. Is that okay? That's the guidance. Let's go back then to uh announcements and consideration of future agenda items. Is it too early to put something on the agenda for next budget cycle? Next budget cycle. Okay. Next, when we uh discuss uh the next budget cycle, I'd like to u look at the dental for the retirements uh figure that with our uh uh premiums for our uh healthcare with our employees. Michael, you will have a report on the cola before then or before the end of the year. We're we're shooting for the next meeting. It may be the first one in December, but and I I would also like to add for the next agenda is for the independent

[3:58:18] auditors to give us the report that they did in May. And I am asking that those reports be delivered in our packets prior to the meeting so the council has time to read them. Sounds good. I at some point not it doesn't have to be at the next meeting but I I really would like to get on this conservation thing and you know and have that discussed and also I would like on a future agenda uh what we what the city is what city the city of St. Angelo is doing um as it relates to recycling, recycling our paper, recycling our recyclables. Recyclables. Recycling your recyclables. You mean the entire city or the entire city? Because now I know we have departments that I know we have certain departments that do it now, but the entire the entire city the city government or everybody in town within the city government. There you go. That's everybody in town. government that'll be probably plugged into city. No, city government city government city offices probably be I think it' be plugged into trash services probably talking about I'm talking about right talking about city offices trash would be what the city of St. Angelo departments are doing as far as recycling is concerned. And that'll be good because Ron's been working on that in conjunction with us moving back into city hall. And there's some stuff going on with that. Great. Cool. All right. I have one, two. Um I got my water bill. I looked at it. I said, "Wow, that's high." I can't tell what's the search charge. What is the search charge on this bill? Just high numbers. I can't tell what drought level I was in when I mean, what did they bill me for drought level three or two or one? because we had all three in one month. I can't tell. And and so we had our water bill changed, but as soon as the search charges hit, I could not tell it. It it has to be clear what your search charges are or it's going to be ineffective. It's just going to make people irritated that our water bills are so high. They need to know why it's high. What drought level are we in? And so I would like to relook at our water bill. It has to be done. I just think from a customer

[4:00:20] service standpoint, we have to do that. Secondly, and related because of that, because of $40 meter check fees, because of conservation issues and all kinds of issues in the water department, I think we should be looking at a mutil municipal utilities district or a co-op or something. I just think that on a on a big picture scheme that you want your citizens to be directly plugged into the process and get politics out. And number two, I think you can start allowing outside communities to latch on to our water system. And the more of them on our water system, the better for several reasons. Conservation, when we go to drought level two, they will too. Uh they use our water, they get their wells out of the ground, our rivers come back alive. It goes on and on and on. But I think that we need to move in that direction. I think the time is ripe for that. That that's going to take some thought. Yeah, that's a pretty big one. How about that's a workshop and not an agenda item. Okay. Okay. It sure might be. or a convention or something. I mean, there's gonna be a lot of data brought forward about other sounds like an education. Yes. Yeah. Not, you know, we're not going to want an agenda. I don't think we want an agenda item. Let's adopt one of these. I think we're going to want a workshop. What is What is one of these? Exactly. And kind of start down. Okay. A workshop. And I I've got one. I'd like to discuss and educate the public on the concern that my constituent brought up on the handicap parking. what's legal, what's not legal, what's state law, what is what is our law, what is, you know, just a brief discussion on the dos and don'ts. Okay. Because it's affecting businesses around downtown area. Okay. Yes. I just going to say that if it helps any they used to have over at the federal courthouse in the lobby and those brochures uh federal handicap laws in what the posting has to be the foot the square footage of the lot the width and the proper wording on the signs as

[4:02:24] to what's towable not towable has got to be there in the compliance they used to have those brochures this little four or five page brochure in the lobby I might add when I first came here I did some training for certified handicapped parking enforcement volunteers so I can find that material and um add that to our discussion become certified. Yes. I need another flag on my wall. And they were volunteers. Okay. Did we get our our Yes. Would it be all right if we moved ahead with the review of the current conservation uh credit terms at the next meeting and then we'll move with the rebate discussion as Daniel's pace directs. Is that is are we good on that? The the conservation credit in the water rate structure we can move ahead with right away. Uh there's no need to link it to anything else that's going on. So we could move right away with that if if you desire. And I do plan to actually meet with you or talk to you individually as far as what's absolutely. So I'm thinking if that's Mr. Hzfeld's the item he brought up incentive program and some thoughts on that. Really just know before before don't I mean we want to have a discussion but I think he was looking for funding as part of the rebate too though, right? I mean that that funding is part of the thing, but it needs to be part of a proposal too to kind of say, well, here's what, you know, again, what some of the other cities are doing and maybe what we could offer and this is what it would cost and that would cost that and well, I'm certain that we can have the discussion about what our current conservation credit terms are, the how quickly we can move what she was talking about, right? She she remembered that we had that that program. As far as a bigger discussion about uh what other programs exist, um we'll have to talk about how I think that's going to take a little bit of

[4:04:27] time for y'all to I think you're right. put that together. So, okay. That's why I don't have to have it at the next one. Just that's what I was hoping to hear. I just want to have it as a topic because it's water and Okay. Other agenda items. Okay. We need motion to adjurnn. Yeah. I have a motion to adjurnn. Second. I have a second. Oh, somebody gets to vote against here. We call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Anyone opposed? You may stay.

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=q9F74BkHyuI